Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., defended keeping Justice Sonia Sotomayor on the Supreme Court after a decision by some Democrats on Sunday. reported President Joe Biden considered pressuring her to resign while still in office.
“No,” Sanders said when “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker asked if she thought Sotomayor, 70, should step down if Biden could nominate a liberal replacement.
He added that he had heard “a little bit” of talk from Democratic senators about asking Sotomayor, who received a lifetime Supreme Court appointment, to step aside.
“I don’t think it makes sense,” Sanders said, without elaborating on his position.
It has since President-elect Donald Trump was predicted to win the presidential election last week conversations behind the scenes Despite calls among Democrats for Sotomayor to resign, no elected Democrat has yet called for the justice to resign.
The impetus behind such calls may be that Biden, a Democrat, is still president for the next two months and that the Senate has a Democratic majority that could confirm a liberal justice to replace Sotomayor.
Starting in January, Trump, a Republican, will control judicial appointments and is projected to have the support of a majority of Republicans in the Senate.
If Sotomayor were to die under Trump, she would likely be replaced by a conservative justice, pushing the current 6-3 conservative court further to the right.
It used to be the Democrats encountered this scenario When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg chose not to resign during the first half of President Barack Obama’s second term, when Democrats held a 55-seat majority in the Senate.
She died in September 2020, and Trump, then serving his first term, replaced her with conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, leading to the court’s current conservative makeup.