Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, First Woman to Sit on the Supreme Court, Dead at 93

Sandra Day O’Connor, the primary feminine justice on the Supreme Court, has died.

Justice O’Connor handed away Friday morning in Phoenix, AZ … the court docket introduced her demise in a press release, saying she died, “of complications related to advanced dementia, probably Alzheimer’s, and a respiratory illness.”

O’Connor made historical past in 1981 when she was appointed to the Excessive Court by President Ronald Reagan. She was thought-about a reasonable conservative, and infrequently made the distinction on the 9-person Court when it got here to momentous choices.

The Stanford Regulation Faculty grad tackled the most important social points within the nation, together with abortion, affirmative motion, and even presidential elections. She voted in 2000 to cease the recount in Florida within the race between Al Gore and George W. Bush … her vote was a part of the bulk that secured Bush’s election.

After leaving the Court in 2006, she bemoaned the way it had swung solution to the appropriate, undoing a few of her choices over her 24-year tenure.

Chief Justice John Roberts stated of Justice O’Connor, “A daughter of the American Southwest, Sandra Day O’Connor blazed an historic path as our Nation’s first feminine Justice. She met that problem with undaunted dedication, indeniable capacity, and fascinating candor.”

5 girls have adopted in O’Connor’s footsteps … Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

O’Connor was 93.