Liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor admitted she sometimes cries after losses in major cases before the conservative-led panel.
“There are days when I come to my office after a case is announced, I close my door and I cry,” the Bronx-born lawyer recalled last week at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in Harvard University.
“There were those days. And there will probably be more,” she said.
Sotomayor, one of three liberal justices on the high court, spoke at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study while receiving the Radcliffe Medal on Friday.
She declined to specify which particular cases made her cry, but she emphasized the need to continue fighting, even in times of despair.
“There are times when I am deeply, deeply sad,” she said. “And there are times when, yes, even I feel despair. We all do. But you have to have it. You have to accept it. You have to shed tears, then wipe them away, get up and fight again.
The 69-year-old judge has previously spoken about her deep frustrations with the Court since its shift to the right, ushered in by former President Donald Trump’s appointment of three conservative justices.
She echoed a similar sentiment in January during a speech at the University of California, Berkeley, Law School, noting that “every loss truly traumatizes me in my stomach and in my heart.”
“But I have to get up the next morning and keep fighting,” she said at the time.
During her January speech, Sotomayor also spoke about the demanding workload that judges on the nation’s highest court face.
“Business is more important. They are more demanding. The number of amici (participating parties) is greater, and you know our emergency schedule is much more active – I’m tired,” she said at the time, according to Bloomberg Law.
“There was a time when we had a good chunk of summer vacation. No more. The emergency schedule is busy almost every week,” the judge said.
Sotomayor faced pressure from progressives to resign so President Biden could name a replacement, after liberals raised concerns about her health and age. Sotomayor, a diabetic, was once forced to travel with a doctor.
Those pushing for her retirement were haunted by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died on the bench in 2020, allowing Trump to name her replacement and secure a conservative seat.
Sotomayor’s remarks last week come as the Supreme Court considers a series of high-profile cases this term, including two on abortion and Trump’s claims of immunity from prosecution.
On Thursday, she was once again in the minority in a key redistricting case out of South Carolina in which the high court sided with the Republicans 6-3. The court ruled that legitimate partisan goals, rather than racial motivations, fueled the district drawing process.
Sotomayor was appointed to the bench by former President Barack Obama in 2009. She is the first Latina to serve as a judge and the third woman.
New York Post
