Justice Samuel Alito has no plans to retire from the Supreme Court anytime soon, a source close to the justice told the Wall Street Journal, halting a flurry of speculation among some Republican leaders that Alito, 74, could vacate the bench to make room for a younger, more conservative jurist.
Rumors about Alito’s retirement began swirling almost immediately after Trump’s victory in the 2024 election, which also saw Republicans set to take back control of the Senate and retain control of the House in January.
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With no filibuster allowed on Supreme Court appointments, the GOP majority would allow Trump to face little if any resistance in confirming his picks for high court justices, should the court’s two oldest conservative justices, Alito and Clarence Thomas, retire.
Alito, for his part, has made clear he has no plans to do so.
“Despite what some people may think, this is a man who has never thought about this job from a political perspective,” a person close to Alito told the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news of his intention to remain on the bench.
“The idea that he’s going to retire for political considerations is not consistent with who he is,” this person added.
Alito was appointed to the Supreme Court in 2006 by President George W. Bush.
At 74, Alito is the second-oldest justice on the bench behind Justice Clarence Thomas, 76, who was appointed to the court by President George H.W. Bush in 1991. Sonia Sotomayor, appointed by President Obama in 2009, is 70.
But pressure for Alito and Thomas to step aside to make way for younger, Trump-picked candidates could prove to be deeply polarizing at a time when public approval of the Supreme Court is in the mid 40s, according to a Gallup survey in September.
Conservatives currently hold a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court. Trump named three justices to the Supreme Court during his first term, preserving its conservative majority. President Biden, for his part, most recently named Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to the court in 2022 after the retirement of Justice Stephen Breyer.
If Alito and Thomas were to retire from the bench, Trump could become the first president since Eisenhower, also a Republican, to name a majority of the justices of the Supreme Court.
