U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is retiring after serving more than two decades on the nation’s highest court, White House and Supreme Court sources tell NPR.
Breyer’s retirement gives President Biden his first opportunity to name a new justice to the court. During the 2020 campaign, he pledged to name an African American woman if he got the chance. The two leading contenders are said to be federal Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was on President Obama’s shortlist for the court in 2016, and California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger, who served as assistant, and then deputy solicitor general in both Democratic and Republican administrations prior to her nomination to California’s highest court.
