Sandra Day O’Connor withdraws from public life

Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman on the Supreme Court, has stepped back from public life.

For more than a decade after leaving the court in 2006, O’Connor kept up an active schedule: serving as a visiting federal appeals court judge, speaking on issues she cared about and founding her own education organization. But the 88-year-old, for more than two decades often the deciding vote in important cases, is now fully retired. She made her last public appearances over two years ago.

This summer she turned over an office she had kept at the Supreme Court to the court’s most recently retired justice, Anthony Kennedy.

Her son Jay O’Connor said in a recent telephone interview with The Associated Press that his mother, like many who reach their upper 80s, began to have challenges with her shortterm memory. That made some public events more difficult. Hip issues have meant she now primarily uses a wheelchair. She now stays close to her home in Phoenix, he said.

“When she hit about 86 years old she decided that it was time to slow things down, that she’d accomplished most of what she set out to do in her postretirement years, that she was getting older physically and her memory was starting to be more challenging, so the time came to dial back her public life,” said Jay O’Connor. His mother is no longer doing interviews.