Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the Senate will quickly move to confirm President Joe Biden’s pick to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.
“President 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,” Schumer said in a statement on Wednesday.
Breyer, who at 83 is the oldest justice, announced earlier Wednesday that he plans to step down. His retirement offers Biden and Democrats an easy opportunity to fill a position on the high court with a liberal nominee following years of frustration with three court vacancies filled by Republicans and former President Donald Trump. Democrats are even weighing whether to pack the court with additional justices to balance out the 6-3 tip.
Confirming Breyer’s replacement won’t run into the usual filibuster challenges from the minority party in the Senate.
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Republicans changed the 60-vote threshold to 51 votes for high court nominees, responding to Democrats who years earlier ended the filibuster for lower court and executive branch appointments.
Biden’s nominee will face the evenly divided Senate Judiciary Committee in several days of hearings. Even if every Republican on the panel votes against the nominee, the Senate can overrule the panel with a simple majority vote, which Democrats can provide with the tiebreaking authority of Vice President Kamala Harris.
Schumer made no mention of whom he would like Biden to select to replace Breyer.
Biden has promised to fill an empty Supreme Court seat with the first black and female justice, and on Wednesday, Democratic lawmakers began calling on the president to uphold that promise.
Schumer isn’t weighing in so far. Instead, he praised Breyer, who had been under pressure from liberal activists to step aside so a Democratic president is able to fill his position.
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“He is, and always has been, a model jurist,” Schumer said in the statement. “He embodies the best qualities and highest ideals of American justice: knowledge, wisdom, fairness, humility, restraint. His work and his decisions as an Associate Justice on the biggest issues of our time — including voting rights, the environment, women’s reproductive freedom, and most recently, health care and the Affordable Care Act — were hugely consequential. America owes Justice Breyer an enormous debt of gratitude.”
