Justice Stephen Breyer, an influential liberal on the Supreme Court, to retire

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is retiring after serving more than two decades on the nation's highest court, Supreme Court and Biden administration sources tell NPR.

Breyer — professorial, practical and moderately liberal — wrote many of the court's legally important but less glamorous decisions and sought, behind the scenes, to build consensus for centrist decisions on a conservative court.

Breyer's retirement gives President Biden his first opportunity to name a new justice to the court. During the 2020 campaign, he pledged to name an African American woman if he got the chance. The two leading contenders are said to be federal Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was on President Barack Obama's shortlist for the court in 2016, and California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger, who served as assistant, and then deputy solicitor general in both Democratic and Republican administrations prior to her nomination to California's highest court.

Both women are young, in terms of Supreme Court appointment. Brown Jackson is 51 and Kruger is 45. And both have stellar legal credentials.

Breyer's decision to retire is a relief to liberal Democrats after seeing Republicans push through three nominees from President Donald Trump using some unprecedented tactics. Indeed last year, some liberal groups publicly pressed Breyer to retire, even demonstrating in front of the Supreme Court. The justice, however demurred. In he said