From the early 1990s until her retirement in 2005, she was the indisputable swing justice
Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court and the justice who held the court’s center for more than a generation, died Friday, a court spokesperson said in a statement.
Her cause of death was complications related to advanced dementia and a respiratory illness. She was 93.
From the early 1990s until her retirement in 2005, she was the indisputable swing justice, often casting the deciding vote in the court’s most contentious cases. Her lack of a consistent judicial philosophy rankled some, but others praised her practical bent as a moderating influence.
She sometimes sided with the court’s conservatives, approving taxpayer-funded vouchers for students at religious schools, voting to end the 2000 Florida recount between George W. Bush and Al Gore, and advocating for states’ rights against federal control.
But she joined with the court’s liberals in upholding affirmative action in college admissions, approving the creation of more congressional districts with African-American voters in the majority, and keeping a wall of separation between government and religion.
O’Connor grew up on the Lazy B, a 160,000-acre cattle ranch in the high desert country straddling the Arizona-New Mexico border. She graduated from law school at Stanford University, where she met her future husband, John, and struck up a lifelong friendship with William Rehnquist, a classmate who would eventually become the nation’s chief justice.
Following four years of service in the Arizona attorney general’s office, she was appointed to fill a vacancy in the state senate in 1969. After being re-elected, she became the first woman in the country to be a state senate majority leader.
She then turned her attention to the courts, running for and winning a position as a Maricopa County Superior Court judge.
In 1981, she came highly recommended when President Ronald Reagan was looking for someone to help him keep a campaign promise to appoint a woman to the Supreme Court. She sounded like a conservative during her Senate confirmation hearing, expressing opposition to the notion that the right to abortion was constitutionally protested.
“My own view in the area of abortion is that I’m opposed to it as a matter of birth control or otherwise,” she said. After she was unanimously confirmed, 99-0, she at first criticized the Roe v. Wade abortion ruling. But she later joined the court’s majority in a series of cases upholding abortion rights.
As the first female justice, her every action was scrutinized, attention that she would later say was intimidating. “It’s thrilling, in a way, to be the first to do something, the first woman ever to serve on the court. But it’s dreadful if you’re the last. And if I didn’t do the job well, that’s what would happen.”
Seven years after coming to the court, she underwent surgery for breast cancer. Years later, she said the disease “fostered a desire in me to make each and every day a good day.”
She and John were married in 1952 and had three children. The O’Connors were frequent guests at Washington social events. An encounter at formal dinner with Washington Redskins star John Riggins made national headlines when he told her at one point, “Loosen up, Sandy baby.”
At age 75, O’Connor abruptly announced her intention to step down from the Supreme Court to attend to John, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. He died, at age 79, in 2009.
She remained active, urging states to do away with elections for judges, which she said made the courts too political. And she was outspoken in saying that the nation’s public schools were shirking their responsibility to provide civics education.
O’Connor’s appointment as the first woman justice not only made history. It also prodded other states to start putting women on their supreme courts. But she recoiled at the thought that a woman would decide cases differently. She was fond of quoting a letter from a supporter who wrote, “Dear Justice O’Connor: Don’t be intimidated by all those men and especially the chief justice. You put on your robes the same way.”
