It occurs every July, but especially when a new presidential administration takes office. Those in the orbit of the United States Supreme Court wonder, “Will a justice retire at the end of the term?”
When President Donald Trump won the election to recapture the White House last year, such discussions began immediately. It instantly focused on the court’s two oldest members: Clarence Thomas, who will be 77 next week and has served for 33 years, and Samuel Alito, who was 75 in April and has served for 19 years.
Both Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, who share a philosophical alignment with Trump on many matters, are typically considered the court’s most conservative members. Alito has also stressed that he has no plans to retire.
However, the present odds suggest that neither is ready to retire just yet.
David Lat, a frequent commentator on the Supreme Court and author of the Original Jurisdiction weekly on Substack, reports that both Thomas and Alito have hired a full complement of legal clerks for the next two years.
While hiring law clerks for a future term “is not dispositive, it can be revealing and is suggestive that they’re sticking around,” Lat says of Thomas and Alito. “They both seem very engaged with their work at the court. They are very active at oral argument. They show no signs of slowing down, and I actually think that they’ve been invigorated by all of the work of the court these days rather than being overwhelmed or exhausted or frustrated.”
Lat argued that Thomas and Alito “seem energized by the centrality of the court to American politics and society today,” referencing conservative victories recently rolling back abortion rights and the administrative state and strengthening the First Amendment right to free exercise of religion and the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
Lat reported on Original Jurisdiction last month that he believes “all nine active justices have hired all their clerks for OT 2025 [October Term]—and looking ahead, five out of nine have hired at least one clerk for OT 2026.”
Lat noted that multiple Thomas clerks have said “that the justice has no current plans of going anywhere.”
“Again, plans can change, but I just don’t see it,” Lat said. “Some people say, ‘Look, they’re in their 70s. Wouldn’t it be great to replace Justice Thomas or Justice Alito with a similarly minded justice who is decades younger?’ I don’t know that they necessarily think in those political terms. They think in terms of, do they still feel they are contributing to the work of the court and whether they are doing a good job.”
Only Thomas and Alito appear to be the subject of retirement speculation.
The court’s three liberal members—Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson—are highly unlikely to step down while Trump is in office amid fears he would appoint a conservative to replace them.
Trump’s three first-term appointees—Justices Neil M. Gorsuch (age 57), Brett M. Kavanaugh (60), and Amy Coney Barrett (53)—are all relatively young and still in their early tenure on the court.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who turned 70 this year, revealed in May that he was not planning to retire.
At a “fireside chat” on May 7 in Buffalo, New York, U.S. District Judge Lawrence Vilardo asked Roberts about retirement.
“Some of your colleagues have retired,” Vilardo said. “You ever think about that? I mean, you’re too young now, but someday, would you?”
“No,” Roberts said without hesitation. “You know, I’m going out feet first.”
He went on to talk about how a potential health decline might someday alter that intention, and how he had once asked two friends to be prepared to tell him if they believed it was “time to go.”
“Because you don’t always notice that you’re slipping,” Roberts said.
After “a long pause and at once, the two of them said, ‘It’s time to go,’” Roberts said, prompting laughter from the audience. “So I said, ‘All right, never mind.’”
