President Joe Biden is eyeing at least three judges for an expected vacancy on the Supreme Court as he prepares to quickly deliver on his campaign pledge to nominate the first Black woman to the nation’s highest court, according to aides and allies. Biden and Justice Stephen Breyer are expected to hold an event at the White House Thursday to formally announce Breyer’s plans to retire, according to a person briefed on the planning who was not authorized to publicly discuss it in advance. Early discussions about a successor are focusing on U.S. Circuit Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, U.S. District Judge J. Michelle Childs and California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger, according to four people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss White House deliberations. Jackson and Kruger have long been seen as possible nominees. Since Biden took office in January 2021, he has focused on nominating a diverse group of judges to the federal bench, installing five Black women on federal appeals courts, with three more nominations pending before the Senate. Other possible candidates for the high court could come from among that group, Biden aides and allies said, especially since almost all of the recent Supreme Court nominees have been federal appeals judges. Read:Justice Breyer to retire, giving Biden first court pick “He has a strong pool to select a candidate from, in addition to other sources. This is an historic opportunity to appoint someone with a strong record on civil and human rights,” said Derrick Johnson, the NAACP’s president. By the end of his first year, Biden had won confirmation of 40 judges, the most since President Ronald Reagan. Of those, 80% are women and 53% are people of color, according to the White House. Jackson, 51, was nominated by President Barack Obama to be a district court judge. Biden elevated her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Early in her career, she was also a law clerk for Breyer. Childs, a federal judge in South Carolina, has been nominated but not yet confirmed to serve on the same circuit court. Her name has surfaced partly because she is a favorite among some high-profile lawmakers, including Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C. Kruger, a graduate of Harvard and Yale’s law school, was previously a Supreme Court clerk and has argued a dozen cases before the justices as a lawyer for the federal government. Breyer, 83, will retire at the end of the summer, according to two sources who confirmed the news to The Associated Press on Wednesday. They spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to preempt Breyer’s formal announcement. But the Senate can confirm a successor before there is a formal vacancy, so the White House was getting to work and it was expected to take at least a few weeks before a nomination was formalized. Biden said Wednesday he wasn’t going to get ahead of Breyer’s announcement. “Every justice should have an opportunity to decide what he or she is going to do and announce it on their own,” Biden said. “Let him make whatever statement he’s going to make and I’ll be happy to talk about it later.” When Biden was running for the White House, he said that if he had the chance to nominate someone to the court, he would make history by choosing a Black woman. And he’s reiterated that pledge since. “As president, I’d be honored, honored to appoint the first African American woman. Because it should look like the country. It’s long past time,” Biden said in February 2020 shortly before South Carolina’s presidential primary. Adding a Black woman to the court would mean a series of firsts — four female justices and two Black justices serving at the same time on the nine-member court. Justice Clarence Thomas is the court’s only Black justice and just the second ever, after Thurgood Marshall. And Biden would have the chance to show Black voters increasingly frustrated with a president they helped to elect that he is serious about their concerns, particularly after he has been unable to push through voting rights legislation. At the same time, Breyer’s replacement by another liberal justice would not change the ideological makeup of the court. Conservatives outnumber liberals by 6-3, and Donald Trump’s three nominees made an already conservative court even more conservative. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Biden’s nominee “will receive a prompt hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee and will be considered and confirmed by the full United States Senate with all deliberate speed.” But Republicans in particular remain upset about Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s contentious 2018 hearing. Still, Democrats have the 50 votes plus a tiebreaker in Vice President Kamala Harris that they need to confirm a nominee. Read: Supreme Court halts Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine rule for US businesses Republicans who changed the Senate rules during the Trump-era to allow simple majority confirmation of Supreme Court nominees appeared resigned to the outcome. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, an influential Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement, “If all Democrats hang together — which I expect they will — they have the power to replace Justice Breyer in 2022 without one Republican vote in support.” Nonetheless, Democrats have also been unable to get all their members on board for Biden’s social and environmental spending agenda or to move forward with a voting rights bill. As a senator, Biden served as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, overseeing six Supreme Court confirmation hearings from 1987 to 1995, including Breyer’s. And one person who will be central to Biden’s process is chief of staff Ron Klain, a former Supreme Court law clerk and chief counsel to that committee. Two other Black women whom Biden appointed to federal appeals courts are also seen as contenders: Holly Thomas, a longtime civil rights lawyer he named to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, and Candace Jackson-Akiwumi, a former public defender he named to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit. Biden could also choose someone from outside the judiciary, though that seems less likely. One contender would be the head of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Sherrilyn Ifill, 59. She has headed the fund since 2013 and has announced she is stepping down in the spring. The Supreme Court has had three women on it for more than a decade, since 2010, when Obama named Justice Elena Kagan to the court to replace the retiring John Paul Stevens. Kagan joined Obama’s other nominee, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s first Latina justice, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. When Ginsburg died in September 2020, Trump announced his choice of Amy Coney Barrett eight days later.

Longtime liberal Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is retiring, numerous sources said Wednesday, giving President Joe Biden his first high court opening, which he has pledged to fill with the historic naming of the court’s first Black woman. Breyer, 83, has been a pragmatic force on a court that has grown increasingly conservative, trying to forge majorities with more moderate justices right and left of center. His retirement will give Biden the chance to name and win confirmation of a replacement before next fall’s election when Republicans could retake the Senate and block future nominees. Democrats are planning a swift confirmation, perhaps even before Breyer officially steps down, which is not expected before summer. He has been a justice since 1994, appointed by President Bill Clinton. Along with the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, he opted not to step down the last time the Democrats controlled the White House and the Senate during Barack Obama’s presidency. Ginsburg died in September 2020, and then-President Donald Trump filled the vacancy with a conservative justice, Amy Coney Barrett. Breyer’s departure won’t change the 6-3 conservative advantage on the court because his replacement will almost certainly be confirmed by a Senate where Democrats have the slimmest majority. It will make conservative Justice Clarence Thomas the oldest member of the court. Thomas turns 74 in June. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Biden’s nominee “will receive a prompt hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee and will be considered and confirmed by the full United States Senate with all deliberate speed.” A White House decision on a nominee could take several weeks, Biden aides and allies said. Republicans who changed the Senate rules during the Trump era to allow simple majority confirmation of Supreme Court nominees appeared resigned to the outcome. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Republican who previously chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement: “If all Democrats hang together – which I expect they will – they have the power to replace Justice Breyer in 2022 without one Republican vote in support.” Liberal interest groups expressed relief. They have been clamoring for Breyer’s retirement, concerned about confirmation troubles if Republicans retake the Senate. “Justice Breyer’s retirement is coming not a moment too soon, but now we must make sure our party remains united in support of confirming his successor,” Demand Justice Executive Director Brian Fallon said. Among the names being circulated as potential nominees are California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger, U.S. Circuit Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, prominent civil rights lawyer Sherrilyn Ifill and U.S. District Judge Michelle Childs, whom Biden has nominated to be an appeals court judge. Childs is a favorite of Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., who made a crucial endorsement of Biden just before South Carolina’s presidential primary in 2020. Biden’s pledge to name the first Black woman to the Supreme Court was made during the 2020 presidential campaign. Since he took office a little more than a year ago, he has been focused on increasing racial, ethnic and experiential diversity in the lower federal courts. He has doubled the number of Black women who serve on appellate courts just below the Supreme Court, with three more nominees pending. Also read: COVID-19 death number in U.S. likely undercounted: expert Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio, the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said, “We know that when America’s boardrooms, legislatures and even the Supreme Court start to resemble America, we all benefit.” Nomination of a Black woman could also help Biden politically with some of the Democratic Party’s most important Election Day supporters. He has been criticized by black leaders and groups for failing so far to persuade the Senate to pass legislation shoring up voting rights that are being restricted in a number of Republican-led states. Change comes slowly to the Supreme Court. Of the 115 justices in U.S. history, there have been just five women, beginning with Sandra Day O’Connor in 1981. One of the five, Justice Sonia Sotomayor is a Latina. Thomas and the late Thurgood Marshall are the only two Black men who have served on the court. The president wouldn’t address reports of Breyer’s retirement on Wednesday. “Every justice should have an opportunity to decide what he or she is going to do and announce it on their own,” Biden said. “Let him make whatever statement he’s going to make and I’ll be happy to talk about it later.” Often overshadowed by his fellow liberal Ginsburg, Breyer authored two major opinions in support of abortion rights on a court closely divided over the issue, and he laid out his growing discomfort with the death penalty in a series of dissenting opinions in recent years. Breyer’s views on displaying the Ten Commandments on government property illustrate his search for a middle ground. He was the only member of the court in the majority in both cases in 2005 that barred displays in two Kentucky courthouses but allowed one to remain on the grounds of the state Capitol in Austin, Texas. In more than 27 years on the court, Breyer has been an active and cheerful questioner during arguments, a frequent public speaker and quick with a joke, often at his own expense. He made a good natured appearance on a humorous National Public Radio program in 2007, failing to answer obscure questions about pop stars. He is known for his elaborate, at times far-fetched, hypothetical questions to lawyers during arguments and he sometimes has had the air of an absent-minded professor. He taught antitrust law at Harvard earlier in his professional career. He also spent time working for the late Sen. Edward Kennedy when the Massachusetts Democrat was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. That experience, Breyer said, made him a firm believer in compromise. Still, he could write fierce dissents, as he did in the Bush v. Gore case that effectively decided the 2000 election in favor of Republican George W. Bush. Breyer unsuccessfully urged his colleagues to return the case to the Florida courts so they could create “a constitutionally proper contest” to decide the winner. At the end of a trying term in June 2007 in which he found himself on the losing end of roughly two dozen 5-4 rulings, his frustrations bubbled over as he summarized his dissent from a decision that invalidated public school integration plans. “It is not often that so few have so quickly changed so much,” Breyer said in a packed courtroom. His time working in the Senate led to his appointment by President Jimmy Carter as a federal appeals court judge in Boston, and he served there for 14 years. His 87-9 high-court confirmation was the last with fewer than 10 dissenting Senate votes. Breyer’s opinions were notable because they never contained footnotes. He was warned off such a writing device by Arthur Goldberg, the justice for whom Breyer clerked as a young lawyer. “It is an important point to make if you believe, as I do, that the major function of an opinion is to explain to the audience of readers why it is that the court has reached that decision,” Breyer once said. “It’s not to prove that you’re right. You can’t prove that you’re right; there is no such proof.” Born in San Francisco, Breyer became an Eagle Scout as a teenager and began a stellar academic career at Stanford, graduating with highest honors. He attended Oxford, where he received first-class honors in philosophy, politics and economics. Breyer then attended Harvard’ Law School, where he worked on the Law Review and graduated with highest honors. He worked in the Justice Department’s antitrust division before splitting time as a Harvard law professor and a lawyer for the Senate Judiciary Committee. Breyer and his wife, Joanna, a psychologist and daughter of the late British Conservative leader John Blakenham, have three children — daughters Chloe and Nell and a son, Michael — and six grandchildren.