Bernie Sanders says he opposes urging Justice Sonia Sotomayor to resign | US Supreme Court

Bernie Sanders said he opposed any attempt to force Sonia Sotomayor, the senior liberal justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, to resign so that Joe Biden could nominate a younger liberal successor before his term as president ends.

Sotomayor, 70, is known to have health problems, and some Democrats fear that Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died during Donald Trump's first term, could die again – giving him a third opportunity to appoint a new justice and the to further strengthen the conservative orientation of the Supreme Court.

In his first term, Trump appointed Neil Gorsuch to replace Antonin Scalia, Brett Kavanaugh to replace Anthony Kennedy and Amy Coney Barrett to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died less than two months before the 2020 election – leaving behind six mostly conservative justices only three liberals.

Trump's appointments to the court in his first term played a crucial role in overturning abortion rights and a series of other rulings that pleased conservative activists.

In an interview on NBC's “Meet the Press,” Sanders, a progressive senator who identifies as an independent but typically votes with Democrats, said it would not be “reasonable” to call on Sotomayor to resign while Biden is still in office be.

He added that he had heard “a little bit” from Democratic senators about calling on Sotomayor, who holds a lifelong term on the Supreme Court, to resign.

“I don’t think that makes sense,” Sanders said, without elaborating.

So far, no elected Democrat has publicly called on the justice to resign, but the idea comes amid frantic efforts by Democrats to “Trump-proof” their agenda before the Republican takes office in January.

Supreme Court justices are nominated by the sitting president but face an often grueling confirmation process in the Senate. With Democrats set to soon lose control of the panel, Biden is quickly losing the opportunity to name a successor to Sotomayor — and for Democratic senators to confirm him — which would make Biden the first president since Jimmy Carter not to have a judge appointed became the Supreme Court.

But with two months left in office, it is unlikely that Biden and a Democratic-controlled Senate will be able to nominate and confirm a new justice to the court in time.

Democrats have previously floated the possibility of increasing the number of justices to address the court's political makeup. In July, Biden proposed term limits and a code of ethics for court judges after a series of scandals involving conservatives Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito cast doubt on their impartiality.

Biden said the court had “weakened civil rights protections, taken away women's right to vote and now granted presidents broad immunity from prosecution for crimes they commit in office.”

In a second term, Trump, meanwhile, could have the opportunity to further deepen the court's conservative bias, since Thomas and Alito are both in their mid-70s.

As Democrats ponder whether Sotomayor should resign to install a liberal replacement justice, Republicans could do the same after taking power in January. “Alito is packing his chambers with relish,” Mike Davis, a conservative lawyer, predicted on social media this week.

Although a Republican majority in the Senate refused to hold confirmation hearings in 2016 when Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland to replace Antonin Scalia, protesting that it would be unfair to do so in an election year, they had no such problems when Trump nominated Barrett Ginsburg nominated his successor in 2020, also an election year.