If Samuel Alito Retires This Summer, It Will Be another Gift to Trump

And totally on brand.

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Recent reporting that Justice Samuel Alito was hospitalized in March has fueled speculation that the 76-year-old Justice—a mainstay of the Trump-stacked supermajority on the Roberts Court—may retire as early as this summer. This week, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Republicans would be “fully prepared“ to confirm a replacement if Alito retired.

A strategically timed retirement would hand Trump the chance to juice his de-motivated base and install a fourth SCOTUS judge on our nation’s highest court. That handoff would provide ample time for a Republican-dominated Congress to rubber-stamp Trump’s pick in the increasingly likely case things go badly for Republicans in the November midterms.

Trump’s replacement of Alito with another ringer for this administration’s agenda would help extend the reign of the illegitimate Roberts Court. Three members of the 6-3 supermajority—Justices Kavanaugh (61), Barrett (54), and Gorsuch (59), all Trump 1.0 picks—potentially have decades left to continue manipulating the law, decimating key democratic institutions, and taking away Americans’ freedoms. Chief Justice Roberts, 71, and Justice Thomas, 77, meanwhile, have shown no signs of slowing their use of the Court to entrench Trump’s power and advance his agenda (with the rare exception of if that agenda conflicts with the interests of Wall Street).

If Alito does decide to gift Trump a fourth appointee to the Court, it will be totally on brand—a final political act in Alito’s use of the courts to make his personal views into binding law. However, his potential retirement also presents an opportunity for pro-freedom forces to underscore his true legacy—one of partisanship and corruption.

Alito In His Own Words...

Alito has made his own views clear when he thought only their ideological bedfellows were listening.

In 2024, the Alitos were secretly recorded by undercover journalist Lauren Windsor at the Supreme Court Historical Society’s annual dinner. Among several statements made to Windsor, Samuel Alito agreed “there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised” with the left. And, when prompted by Windsor, he endorsed what he called the need to fight to “return our country to a place of godliness.” He added bluntly “[o]ne side or the other is going to win.”

In the same batch of recorded audio, Martha-Ann Alito, his spouse, expressed her distaste for Pride flags in her neighborhood. She apparently had no issue with flying other kinds of political flags, however. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Alito blamed Martha-Ann after reporters learned they had flown an upside-down American flag, a symbol for Trump supporters who falsely asserted Trump won the 2020 election, over their home. It was also reported that the Alitos flew an “Appeal to Heaven” flag, a symbol appropriated by January 6^th rioters, over their second home.

Friends in Far-Right Places

According to the watchdog organization Fix the Court, Alito has also taken in the second highest value in gifts of any sitting justice during his tenure on the court, second only to Thomas.

As reported by ProPublica, those gifts include a a private jet trip to an Alaskan fishing lodge organized by two powerful men: Leonard Leo, whose influence operation wields over $1 billion to turn back our rights, and GOP megadonor and billionaire financier Paul Singer, who has had several cases before the Supreme Court. (Alito, who did not disclose that trip before it was reported, pleaded ignorance to Singer’s interests before the Court, and absurdly claimed a right to take a seat on the private jet of his host because...the seat was vacant.)

In 2023, Alito visited Gloria von Thurn und Taxis at her castle and accepted concert tickets valued at $900 from the German aristocrat “ who is deeply entrenched in an international rightwing movement that is seeking to advance conservative Catholic policies.” That was after Alito took a lavish—and privately subsidized—victory tour to Europe after he wrote the reviled Roberts majority opinion overturning Roe v. Wade.

Alito has also been criticized for not only speaking privately to Trump but doing so as a case related to the president was being reviewed by the Supreme Court. In January 2025, as Trump was about to enter his second term, he and Alito reportedly had a phone conversation as Trump’s lawyers were filing an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court to prevent his sentencing in a hush money case in New York. The call was allegedly planned for Alito to serve as a reference for one of his law clerks, and Alito claimed he had no idea Trump’s case was being appealed. Despite these excuses, CNN rightly noted that, “The call may give the conservative court’s critics another reason to question its independence from politics and Trump in particular.”

But Has He Been a Fair Judge? Also, No.

It’s hard to believe that Alito’s professed political beliefs and those of the company he keeps haven’t come to bear on his jurisprudence, particularly since his judicial record is so overwhelmingly in line with those views.

Alito’s antipathy toward abortion rights has underscored his career. Decades before he wrote the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that stripped women of federal constitutional protection of their rights to access abortion care, he used his anti-abortion views for conservative street cred. In a 1985 job application to work in the office of then-U.S. Attorney General Ed Meese, Alito asserted he was “proud” to have worked on cases arguing against affirmative action and reproductive access. The 2022 Dobbs decision he penned, which has subjected those seeking reproductive care in red states to draconian restrictions and in some cases prosecution, was the culmination of his professional efforts.

Alito also authored the 2021 anti-voting rights decision in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, which has made it more difficult to challenge racially discriminatory voting laws as unconstitutional. John Roberts tapped him to write the destructive ruling in last year’s Alexander v. South Carolina NAACP decision, which decreed that states can racially discriminate when drawing voting maps as long as they claim it is for partisan gain.

Alito has regularly (basically always) sided with ultrawealthy individuals and big corporations over every-day Americans. Alito dissented from the majority in the 2024 Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. Community Financial Services Association of America case, where he asserted that the CFPB was now allowed to “bankroll its own agenda without any congressional control or oversight.” He also dissented from the 2021 California v. Texas decision, where he took the position that key parts of the Affordable Care Act were unconstitutional and states could sue to challenge it. (Even his usual fringe ally Clarence Thomas did not join Alito in this dissent).

Alito also authored the 2018 anti-labor Janus v. AFSCME decision, which was designed to weaken the power of unions in America by striking down a public sector’s ability to charge free riders (non-members) a fee for benefits they received from a union-negotiated contract.

This Supreme Court term is seemingly no different for Alito. In Trump v. Barbara, a case challenging President Trump’s executive order restricting birth-right citizenship, Mother Jones noted that Alito was the justice who seemed most sympathetic to the Trump administration’s “chaotic and contradictory arguments” asserting that a president can strip Americans born here of their citizenship based on the parents’ status, despite the plain command of the Constitution.

Alito also appears teed up to further gut the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais, potentially handing the GOP several more seats in Congress. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R), while responding to a reporter’s question about his own efforts to gerrymander Florida, expressed confidence that Callais would resolve in his favor and let it slip that Alito may be writing the case, leaving critics to question how he had such insider information.

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If and when Samuel Alito does decide to retire, pro-democracy forces cannot allow the captured media ecosystem to flood the zone with hagiographies and celebrations of the Justice’s professional accomplishments. The fact is that Alito epitomizes the corruption and partisanship that have decimated our rights and lost the public’s confidence in the Supreme Court.

Americans don’t want another, younger Alito to take his place. Opposing an Alito 2.0 is essential. So is banging the drum for meaningful court reforms, which have growing momentum. We must wrest power from the hands of the out-of-control Roberts Court and empower the people’s branch, ensuring that our nation’s highest court is unrigged and its power is checked as part of the checks and balances essential to protect our freedoms.

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