WASHINGTON — All nine of the Supreme Court’s current justices lined up to pay their respects Monday to the late Sandra Day O’Connor, the court’s first female member.
The justices, joined by the retired Anthony Kennedy, stood to greet the trailblazing jurist’s remains inside the court’s Great Hall after her casket was carried up the building’s front stairs facing the Capitol.
O’Connor’s body will lie in repose outside the nation’s most powerful courtroom before a Tuesday funeral at the National Cathedral, where President Biden will deliver a eulogy.
O’Connor died Dec. 1 at age 93 after serving as a closely watched swing vote on the highest court in the land from 1981 through January 2006.
President Ronald Reagan nominated O’Connor fewer than six months into his first term of office to replace the retiring Potter Stewart, keeping one of his 1980 campaign pledges, and she easily won confirmation by a 99-0 Senate vote.
Biden, then a senator, was among those who voted in favor of the Republican nominee.
O’Connor was an Arizona appeals court judge before joining the country’s top court and was a Republican state senator from 1969 to 1975 — becoming in 1973 the first woman to serve as a state senate’s majority leader.
As a Supreme Court justice, O’Connor often cast the deciding vote in key cases, including in 2000’s Bush v. Gore, in which the court ended Florida’s recount of presidential ballots and confirmed Republican George W. Bush’s victory over Democrat Al Gore by 537 votes in the Sunshine State — ensuring his Electoral College triumph.
O’Connor also sided with the majority in landmark cases such as 2003’s Lawrence v. Texas, which invalidated state laws against same-sex sexual conduct, and in 1992’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which upheld the federal right to an abortion.
The latter ruling was overturned by the court last year in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
O’Connor announced her retirement from the Supreme Court in 2005. After leaving the bench, she served as the chancellor of the College of William and Mary — a figurehead role once filled by George Washington — for seven years.
Her husband, John O’Connor, died in 2009 after a long decline caused by Alzheimer’s disease.