WASHINGTON (ABP) — Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who has played a crucial role in many of the Supreme Court's most controversial decisions over the past 24 years, announced her plans to retire from that body July 1.
The surprise announcement means President Bush, who will nominate O'Connor's successor, will have the opportunity to shift the ideological balance of a closely divided court. A strongly conservative justice replacing the famously moderate O'Connor could shift the court's rulings to the right for decades to come.
But Bush will face a strong battle from those who oppose his views on a host of issues, such as the proper relationship between church and state, abortion rights, affirmative action and the rights of gay and lesbian people.
In a simple, three-sentence letter to Bush, released to the media by Supreme Court officials, O'Connor said she would retire “effective upon the nomination and confirmation of my successor.”
She continued, “It has been a great privilege, indeed, to have served as a member of the court for 24 terms. I will leave it with enormous respect for the integrity of the court and its role under our constitutional structure.”
O'Connor, 75, has been rumored for at least a year to be considering retirement. Her husband, John, has Alzheimer's disease.
“America is proud of Justice O'Connor's distinguished service, and I'm proud to know her,” Bush said, in brief comments about an hour after O'Connor's announcement. “Throughout her tenure, she has been a discerning and conscientious judge and a public servant of great integrity.”
However, in a foreshadowing of the rancor that may attend the confirmation of O'Connor's successor in the Senate, Bush admonished members of that body — and the multitude of special-interest groups that will lobby hard both for and against Bush's nominees.
“The nation deserves, and I will select, a Supreme Court Justice that Americans can be proud of,” Bush said, speaking to reporters in the White House's Rose Garden. “The nation also deserves a dignified process of confirmation in the United States Senate characterized by fair treatment, a fair hearing and a fair vote. I will choose a nominee in a timely manner so that the hearing and the vote can be completed before the new Supreme Court term begins.”
But the warning signs of an ugly Senate confirmation battle were already evident. Within minutes of O'Connor's announcement, civil-rights and church-state separationist groups were issuing statements warning Bush to choose an equally moderate nominee.
Noting that O'Connor was a key “swing vote” on church-state issues and other divisive social issues, Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State said Americans “must insist that President Bush replace her with a nominee who respects individual freedom.”
He continued, “O'Connor was a conservative, but she saw the complexity of church-state issues and tried to choose a course that respected the country's religious diversity. Her resignation potentially opens the door to the greatest change in the court's direction in modern history.”
The gay-rights group Human Rights Campaign issued a press release calling O'Connor's resignation a “serious threat to civil rights.”
But religious conservative groups will likely push Bush hard to nominate a strong social conservative. O'Connor has voted to uphold the core of Roe vs. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that gave women across the nation a right to abortion. She has tended to side with gay-rights supporters, and has ruled both for and against strict church-state separation.
O'Connor's announcement came only five days after she delivered a stirring endorsement of religious freedom as the court handed down two decisions on governmental displays of the Ten Commandments. In an opinion concurring with the five-person majority that said Decalogue displays in two Kentucky courthouses violated the First Amendment, O'Connor drew a bright line against government endorsements of religious texts.
“Our Founders conceived of a republic receptive to voluntary religious expression, and provided for the possibility of judicial intervention when government action threatens or impedes such expression. Voluntary religious belief and expression may be as threatened when government takes the mantle of religion upon itself as when government directly interferes with private religious practices,” she wrote in McCreary County, Ky. vs. ACLU. “When the government associ ates one set of religious beliefs with the state and identi fies non-adherents as outsiders, it encroaches upon the individual's decision about whether and how to worship.”
She continued: “It is true that many Americans find the Commandments in accord with their personal beliefs. But we do not count heads before enforcing the First Amendment.”
O'Connor's announcement took some Supreme Court watchers by surprise, as many had expected Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who is ailing from thyroid cancer, to leave the court first.
A conservative replacement for Rehnquist, who tended to come down on O'Connor's right in rulings on divisive social issues, would not likely change the court's ideological balance. But replacing O'Connor with a strong social conservative could mean significant shifts in the way the court interprets the Constitution for the next several decades.
On church-state issues, for instance, O'Connor has frequently frustrated religious conservatives.
“They see that they just don't have five votes for the proposition that the government can legitimately acknowledge the nation's religious heritage… [and] they want to do that in biblical terms,” said Chip Lupu, a professor at George Washington University Law School and an expert on the First Amendment's religion clauses. With O'Connor, Lupu said, there were only “four votes that there should be power [for the government] to acknowledge the nation's religious heritage.”
But a replacement more amenable to government-endorsed religion could mean a five-vote majority for allowing many more religious displays on public property, government-sponsored prayer and other forms of government-supported religious exercise.
However, Lupu noted, the bigger battle over O'Connor's replacement is likely to focus on abortion rights.
O'Connor was the first woman to be appointed to the high court when she was nominated by the late President Ronald Reagan in 1981. She won confirmation on a 99-0 vote in the Senate.
Her successor is almost certain not to garner such a large margin of victory.