Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to serve as a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, has died. O’Connor passed away on Friday in Phoenix, Arizona of complications related to advanced dementia, probably Alzheimer’s, and a respiratory illness, the Supreme Court said in a statement, per CBS News. She was 93.
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, and graduated from law school at Stanford University, where she met her future husband, John. She served for four years in the Arizona attorney general’s office before she was appointed to fill a vacancy in the state senate in 1969. Following her re-election, she became the first woman in the country to be a state senate majority leader. She went on to run for and win a position as a Maricopa County Superior Court judge.
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O’Connor was appointed to the court in 1981 by President Ronald Reagan, making her the first woman to serve on the nation’s highest bench. During her 24-year tenure, O’Connor became a key swing vote on some of the court’s biggest cases. At times, O’Connor 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, per NBC News.
But throughout her decades-long career as a Supreme Court justice, she also sided with the court’s liberals on numerous occasions,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, per NBC News.
“A daughter of the American Southwest, Sandra Day O’Connor blazed an historic trail as our Nation’s first female Justice. She met that challenge with undaunted determination, indisputable ability, and engaging candor,” Chief Justice John Roberts said in a statement released by the court, CNBC reported. “We at the Supreme Court mourn the loss of a beloved colleague, a fiercely independent defender of the rule of law, and an eloquent advocate for civics education. And we celebrate her enduring legacy as a true public servant and patriot.”
After serving on the court for nearly a quarter-century, O’Connor retired in 2006, though she “remained active as a tireless advocate for judicial independence and the Rule of Law throughout the world. In recognition of her lifetime accomplishments, President Barack Obama awarded Justice O’Connor with the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, on August 12, 2009,” per her Supreme Court biography. In 2018, she announced she was withdrawing from public life after being diagnosed with dementia.
