US President Joe Biden on Thursday reaffirmed his commitment to nominate the first black woman to the US Supreme Court, saying it was “long overdue.” He praised retired Judge Stephen Breyer as a model public servant and promised to have a nominee by the end of February.
Breyer, 83, joined Biden at the White House a day after news broke of his upcoming retirement.
Since Biden took office in January 2021, he has dedicated himself to nominating a diverse group of federal judges, not only in terms of race but also in professional experience. He appointed five black women to federal appellate courts, and three more nominations remain pending before the Senate.
“I have not made any decisions except that the person I will nominate will be someone with extraordinary qualifications, character, experience and integrity,” Biden said, joined by Breyer. “And that person will be the first black woman to be nominated to the Supreme Court of the United States. It’s something that should have been done a long time ago.”
By the end of his first year in office, Biden had secured confirmations for 40 justices, the most since the Reagan administration. Of them, 80% are women and 53% are non-white, according to the White House.
Replacing Breyer with another liberal justice will not change the ideological makeup of the court. Conservatives outnumber liberals 6-3, and then-President Donald Trump’s three nominees took the Supreme Court even further to the right.
Biden beforehand has met with at least one of the leading candidates, Ketanji Brown Jackson, 51, Breyer’s former assistant worked at the United States Sentencing Commission and has been a federal trial court judge since 2013 in the District of Columbia.
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