Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the Supreme Court’s first female justice, has died at the age of 93 in Phoenix.
The high court announced her death Friday morning, noting that she had “advanced dementia, probably Alzheimer’s and a respiratory illness.”
“A daughter of the American Southwest, Sandra Day O’Connor blazed a historic trail as our nation’s first female justice,” said Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. “She met that challenge with undaunted determination, indisputable ability, and engaging candor. We at the Supreme Court mourn the loss of a beloved colleague, a fiercely independent defender of the rule of law, and an eloquent advocate for civics education. And we celebrate her enduring legacy as a true public servant and patriot.”
In 2018, O’Connor announced she had been diagnosed with dementia and would no longer be appearing in public due to her condition.
O’Connor was appointed to the court by President Reagan in 1981, and confirmed unanimously by the Senate. She was the first woman to sit on the bench, with five more to follow over the decades: the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Elena Kagan, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
On the bench, O’Connor’s influence could best be seen, and her legal thinking most closely scrutinized, in the court’s rulings on abortion, perhaps the most contentious and divisive issue the justices faced. She balked at letting states outlaw most abortions, refusing in 1989 to join four other justices who were ready to reverse the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that said women have a constitutional right to abortion.
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Then in 1992, she helped forge and lead a five-justice majority that reaffirmed the core holding of the 1973 ruling.
“Some of us as individuals find abortion offensive to our most basic principles of morality, but that can’t control our decision,” O’Connor said in court, reading a summary of the decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. “Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code.”
That case was effectively overruled last year when the high court said the issue of abortion belongs to the states.
Renee Knake Jefferson, a law professor at the University of Houston and an expert on women and the high court, said O’Connor was a true pioneer and legal legend.
“The passing of Justice O’Connor marks a defining milestone in our nation’s history at a time when women’s rights are increasingly under threat,” said Ms. Jefferson. “When asked about being the first woman on the Supreme Court, she said she didn’t want to be the last. Thanks to her extraordinary example and legacy, countless women have been selected for positions of leadership and power not just in the legal profession but across all sectors.”
O’Connor served until 2006, and was a moderate member of the court. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. took her vacated seat.
She served on the high court under the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, as well as a few months under Chief Justice Roberts before her retirement.
Rehnquist and O’Connor both attended Stanford Law School and dated briefly. He proposed marriage to her, but she declined.
Her husband, John O’Connor, passed away in 2009. She is survived by her three sons and six grandchildren.
The granddaughter of a pioneer who traveled west from Vermont and founded the family ranch some three decades before Arizona became a state, O’Connor had a tenacious, independent spirit that came naturally. As a child growing up in the remote outback, she learned early to ride horses, round up cattle and drive trucks and tractors.
O’Connor was born in Texas, but made her political and judicial life in Arizona where she served as state attorney general, in the Arizona state Senate, and as a judge on the Arizona Court of Appeals.
She wasted little time building a reputation as a hard worker who wielded considerable political clout on the nine-member court.
“I didn’t do all the things the boys did,” she said in a 1981 Time magazine interview, “but I fixed windmills and repaired fences.”
On the high court, O’Connor was a moderate conservative justice. She became a bit more liberal in her opinions during her later years, as the court grew more conservative.
She sided with the majority in several controversial cases during her tenure.
She authored the opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger in 2003, which upheld affirmative action at the University of Michigan. In her opinion. O’Connor suggested there would be a time limit on the practice of using race as part of admissions criteria. The high court effectively overturned that ruling recently.
She also landed in the majority with Bush v. Gore, a 5-4 ruling that handed the 2000 election to Republican George W. Bush by ending recount challenges.
O’Connor was regarded with great fondness by many of her colleagues. When she retired, Justice Clarence Thomas, a consistent conservative, called her “an outstanding colleague, civil in dissent and gracious when in the majority.”
She could, nonetheless, express her views tartly. In one of her final actions as a justice, a dissent to a 5-4 ruling to allow local governments to condemn and seize personal property to allow private developers to build shopping plazas, office buildings and other facilities, she warned the majority had unwisely ceded yet more power to the powerful.
“The specter of condemnation hangs over all property,” O’Connor wrote. “Nothing is to prevent the state from replacing … any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory.”
Plans for O’Connor’s funeral have not yet been announced.
• This story is based in part on wire service reports.
• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.
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