Sandra Day O’Connor was the first woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court, taking her seat on September 25, 1981, and sitting for twenty-five years as the Rehnquist Court’s most consequential swing vote.1Supreme Court of the United States. Sandra Day O’Connor: First Woman on the Supreme Court – Appointment to the Supreme Court She shaped the law on abortion, affirmative action, religion in public life, federalism, and the 2000 presidential election before retiring in 2006 to care for her husband. She died on December 1, 2023, in Phoenix, Arizona, at the age of ninety-three, from complications of advanced dementia and a respiratory illness.2Supreme Court of the United States. Press Release – December 1, 2023
From a Cattle Ranch to Stanford Law
Sandra Day was born on March 26, 1930, in El Paso, Texas, and grew up on the Lazy B, her family’s cattle ranch on the Arizona-New Mexico border.3Federal Judicial Center. O’Connor, Sandra Day She entered Stanford at sixteen, earned an economics degree in 1950, and continued into Stanford Law School through an accelerated program that combined the two degrees in six years.4Supreme Court of the United States. Sandra Day O’Connor: First Woman on the Supreme Court – Childhood and Education She graduated in 1952, third in her class. One of her classmates was William Rehnquist, the future Chief Justice she would serve alongside for most of her Supreme Court tenure.
The Doors That Would Not Open
Her academic record did not translate into a job. O’Connor later recalled that no California law firm would even grant her an interview once they learned she was a woman. A senior partner at a prominent Los Angeles firm looked over her résumé, complimented her record, and asked how well she could type. When she said she wanted to practice law, he told her the firm had never hired a woman lawyer and he did not expect it ever would. That experience shaped how she thought about institutional barriers and about equal protection for the rest of her career.
She took the only legal work she could find: an unpaid position as a deputy county attorney in San Mateo County, California.5Supreme Court of the United States. Sandra Day O’Connor: First Woman on the Supreme Court – Early Career After a stretch in Germany as a civilian attorney for the U.S. Army, she returned to Arizona and raised three sons with her husband, John Jay O’Connor III, before re-entering public life.
Rising Through Arizona Government
O’Connor became an assistant attorney general for Arizona in 1965.6General Services Administration. Women of Justice: Sandra Day O’Connor Appointed to a vacant Arizona State Senate seat in 1969, she won election twice on her own and rose to majority leader in 1972, the first woman anywhere in the country to hold that position in a state legislature.5Supreme Court of the United States. Sandra Day O’Connor: First Woman on the Supreme Court – Early Career In 1975 she moved to the bench as a trial judge on the Maricopa County Superior Court, and in 1979 she joined the Arizona Court of Appeals. Service in all three branches of Arizona government gave her a working feel for how states actually operate, something that would surface again and again in her federalism opinions.
Appointment to the Supreme Court
During his 1980 campaign, Ronald Reagan pledged to put the first woman on the Supreme Court. When Justice Potter Stewart retired in 1981, Reagan nominated O’Connor.7National Archives. President Ronald Reagan’s Nomination of Sandra Day O’Connor to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States The Senate confirmed her 99 to 0.8Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor
How She Approached the Job
O’Connor became the hardest justice on the Rehnquist Court to predict. She often cast the deciding vote in five-to-four cases, and through the 1990s and early 2000s commentators regularly described her as the most powerful person in American law. She preferred narrow rulings tied closely to the facts of each case and favored fact-intensive balancing tests over bright-line rules. Federalism was the one constant: she argued consistently that the Constitution protected real state sovereignty against federal overreach, and that conviction drove her votes in Commerce Clause, Tenth Amendment, and sovereign immunity cases.
The Rulings That Define Her
Planned Parenthood v. Casey
In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992), O’Connor co-authored the plurality opinion with Justices Kennedy and Souter that preserved the core holding of Roe v. Wade and replaced its trimester framework with the “undue burden” standard.9Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992) Under that standard, a state regulation was unconstitutional if it placed a substantial obstacle in the path of someone seeking an abortion before fetal viability. The framework defined reproductive-rights law for the next three decades.
Grutter v. Bollinger
She wrote the majority opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003), upholding the University of Michigan Law School’s use of race as one factor in admissions.10Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003) Universities, she concluded, have a compelling interest in the educational benefits of a diverse student body, and the law school’s holistic, individualized review was narrowly tailored enough to satisfy strict scrutiny. In a passage that would be quoted for years afterward, she expressed the expectation that race-conscious admissions would no longer be necessary in twenty-five years.
United States v. Lopez
Her federalism instincts drove her vote in United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995), which struck down the Gun-Free School Zones Act.11Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995) The Court held that possessing a firearm near a school was not an economic activity with a substantial effect on interstate commerce and that Congress had exceeded its Commerce Clause authority. It was the first time in nearly sixty years that the Court had invalidated a federal law on Commerce Clause grounds.
The Endorsement Test
In her concurrence in Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668 (1984), a case about a city-sponsored nativity display, O’Connor proposed what became known as the endorsement test: courts should ask whether a government action sends a message to non-adherents that they are outsiders in the political community.12Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668 (1984) Both government endorsement and government disapproval of religion, she argued, violate the First Amendment. The test became a frequently used tool in Establishment Clause cases for the next two decades.13Legal Information Institute. Establishment Clause Tests
Strickland v. Washington
Also in 1984, she wrote the majority opinion in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, setting the standard every criminal defendant must meet to prove their lawyer failed them.14Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984) Under her two-pronged test, a defendant must show that counsel’s performance was objectively deficient and that the deficiency created a reasonable probability of a different outcome. It remains the governing standard for ineffective-assistance claims in every American court.
Shaw v. Reno
In Shaw v. Reno, 509 U.S. 630 (1993), O’Connor delivered the majority opinion opening the door to constitutional challenges against racially gerrymandered legislative districts.15Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Shaw v. Reno, 509 U.S. 630 (1993) A redistricting plan so bizarre on its face that it was unexplainable on grounds other than race, she held, had to survive strict scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause, even as states remained obligated to comply with the Voting Rights Act.
Bush v. Gore
She joined the per curiam opinion in Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000), halting the manual recount of ballots in Florida.16Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000) Seven justices agreed that the varying recount standards across Florida counties violated the Equal Protection Clause; only five agreed on the remedy of ending the recount because the state could not complete a constitutionally adequate one before the statutory deadline. The decision resolved the election for George W. Bush and remains one of the most debated rulings in the Court’s history.
Life After the Bench
O’Connor announced her retirement in July 2005 to care for her husband, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1990. She left the Court in early 2006 after Justice Samuel Alito was confirmed as her replacement.
She stayed active. She sat by designation on three-judge panels of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, hearing oral arguments until 2013.17United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Ninth Circuit Judges Reflect on the Passing of Retired Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor In 2009 she founded iCivics, a nonprofit that teaches students how government works through digital games and lesson plans.18iCivics. About: Our Founder It grew to serve nine million students across all fifty states and became the nation’s leading provider of nonpartisan civic education resources.19iCivics. About: Our History On August 12, 2009, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.20Supreme Court of the United States. Sandra Day O’Connor: First Woman on the Supreme Court – Post-Retirement
Diagnosis, Death, and Legacy
On October 23, 2018, O’Connor released a public letter disclosing that she had been diagnosed with the beginning stages of dementia, probably Alzheimer’s disease, and could no longer participate in public life.21Supreme Court of the United States. Public Letter from Sandra Day O’Connor She died five years later.
Her twenty-five years on the Court left marks that reach well past any single opinion. The endorsement test reshaped Establishment Clause analysis. The undue-burden standard governed reproductive rights for three decades. Her insistence on real limits to the Commerce Clause helped revive federalism as a constitutional constraint. Strickland still governs every ineffective-assistance claim in the country. And the barriers she broke through at every stage of her career changed what was possible for the women who followed her onto the bench.