United States Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor reportedly admitted that she cried in despair over some of the court’s rulings.
According to the New York Post, Sotomayor, 69, who has served on the Court since 2009, made the remarks at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University last week.
“There are days that I’ve come to my office after an announcement of a case and closed my door and cried,” she reportedly said.
“There have been those days. And there are likely to be more,” she added.
In her remarks, Sotomayor did not specify which rulings made her cry.
“There are moments when I’m deeply, deeply sad,” she said. “And there are moments when, yes, even I feel desperation. We all do. But you have to own it. You have to accept it. You have to shed the tears, and then you have to wipe them and get up and fight some more.”
Reportedly, she has discussed her frustrations with the conservative-majority court since President Donald Trump’s term (via NYP):
She echoed a similar sentiment in January while speaking at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, reflecting that “every loss truly traumatizes me in my stomach and in my heart.
“But I have to get up the next morning and keep on fighting,” she said at the time.
During those January remarks, Sotomayor also spoke about the demanding workload that justices on the nation’s highest court face.
“Cases are bigger. They’re more demanding. The number of amici [participating parties] are greater, and you know that our emergency calendar is so much more active — I’m tired,” she said at the time, according Bloomberg Law.
In 2021, Townhall reported how Sotomayor described the Supreme Court’s refusal to block a Texas law that banned abortion after fetal heartbeat detection “catastrophic.” And, she was one of the dissenting justices in the Dobbs decision and the decision surrounding affirmative action admissions in college campuses.
Reportedly, Sotomayor is facing pressure from left-wing supporters to step down so that President Joe Biden can appoint her replacement. This pressure stems from Sotomayor’s health and age, as she is diabetic and has been forced to travel with a medic, the Post noted.