Some Democratic lawmakers are growing increasingly vocal with their calls for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer to retire.
Liberal activists have called for Breyer’s retirement early in President Joe Biden’s term while Democrats control the Senate to avoid another scenario like what happened after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last year. Shortly before Election Day 2020, Republican President Donald Trump and a GOP-controlled Senate replaced a justice from the court’s liberal flank with a more conservative justice, Amy Coney Barrett.
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In an interview with NPR’s Nina Totenberg published this week, Breyer, who turned 83 last month, declined to shed new light on his retirement plans, joking that he would like the interview to focus on his new book.
“I’m only going to say that I’m not going to go beyond what I previously said on the subject, and that is that I do not believe I should stay on the Supreme Court, or want to stay on the Supreme Court, until I die,” Breyer said. “And when exactly I should retire, or will retire, has many complex parts to it. I think I’m aware of most of them, and I am, and will consider them.”
Breyer hired clerks last month for the court’s next term, a likely indication he has no immediate plans to retire.
This week’s interview was the latest in a series of media interviews in which Breyer brushed off calls for his retirement, to the growing consternation of his critics.
New York Democrat Mondaire Jones, an advocate of expanding the Supreme Court, took to Twitter to criticize Breyer’s objection to the proposal.
Justice Breyer’s constant advice to the legislative branch does nothing to de-politicize the Court. https://t.co/uxtY1rtNie
— Mondaire Jones (@MondaireJones) September 10, 2021
Earlier this year, Jones became the first member of Congress to call for Breyer’s retirement. A growing chorus of Democratic lawmakers followed, including Reps. Ted Lieu of California and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar.
Florida state Rep. Omari Hardy, who is running for Congress in a special election in the state’s 20th Congressional District, accused Breyer of “choosing to risk the preservation of democracy in America for his ego” in declining to retire.
A small part of me is charmed by the very-Breyer sentence: “I think I’m aware of most of them, and I am, and will consider them.”
But the rest of me is horrified that Justice Breyer, like Justice Ginsburg, is choosing to risk the preservation of democracy in America for his ego. https://t.co/YNh6n9Cwug
— Rep. Omari Hardy (@OmariJHardy) September 10, 2021
I wish that Justice Breyer would “come around” to the idea of retiring while Joe Biden is president and the Senate in Democratic hands. https://t.co/XtqsHpFiTp
— Rep. Omari Hardy (@OmariJHardy) September 10, 2021
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Liberal activists have also called for Breyer to retire. The group Demand Justice drove a billboard truck around Capitol Hill earlier this year with a message demanding Breyer’s retirement so that Biden could fulfill his campaign promise to nominate the court’s first black woman justice.
