Sandra Day O’Connor reveals she’s in first stages of dementia
WASHINGTON — Retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor revealed Tuesday in an open letter that she has stepped away from public life because she is suffering from dementia.
The first woman to serve on the Supreme Court, O’Connor, now 88, announced in a letter to the public she is in the beginning stages of dementia, “probably Alzheimer’s disease.”
She said her diagnosis was made some time ago and that as her condition has progressed, she is “no longer able to participate in public life.”
O’Connor served as a state legislator in Arizona, including as the majority leader of the state Senate, as well as a judge before President Ronald Reagan chose her for the high court in 1981.
For much of her 24-year career on the court, she was its most influential justice, the one who decided the biggest cases. Overall, she had a moderate-conservative record, but she cast key votes to preserve a woman’s right to choose abortion and to permit affirmative action admissions policies at universities.
In 2000, she joined the 5-4 decision in the Bush v. Gore case of 2000 that halted the ballot recount in Florida and made George W. Bush the president.
But in the years afterward, she seemed to move somewhat to the left. She cast the key vote to uphold the McCain-Feingold Act and its limits on campaign spending in 2003 and she argued for maintaining the separation of church and state.
In 2004, she wrote an opinion dealing a defeat to the Bush administration and holding that courts and Congress must play a role in the war on terror. “A state of war is not a blank check for the president.” she said.
In July 2005, she surprised her colleagues by announcing her plans to retire. She said then her decision was influenced by the declining health of her husband, John O’Connor III, who also suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. He died in 2009.
While serving as a justice, she said she had been surprised and dismayed to see that young people were learning little about government and courts. In her letter Tuesday, O’Conner urged others to carry on the effort to get young Americans involved in government.
O’Connor’s letter appeared to follow the model of Reagan, who disclosed in a 1994 letter that he was afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease.
O’Connor did not have the obvious upbringing for a future justice, as she noted in her closing comments. She was raised on a cattle ranch in the desert near the border of Arizona and New Mexico.
“While the final chapter of my life with dementia may be trying, nothing has diminished my gratitude and deep appreciation for the countless blessings in my life. How fortunate I feel to be an American and to have been presented with the remarkable opportunities available to the citizens of our country. As a young cowgirl from the Arizona desert, I never could have imagined that one day I would become the first woman justice on the U.S. Supreme Court,” she wrote.