Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito says he weighed retiring earlier this year but stayed on because he believes he can still serve the Constitution, rejecting any political motive.
In a wide-ranging interview with CBS News’ Jan Crawford, the 76-year-old justice said retirement is something a person his age has to think about every term. He briefly considered stepping down earlier this year, then chose not to.
His reason was straightforward. He believes he can still do the job and does not want to surrender the chance to serve the Constitution and the country while he remains able. Daily Mail reporting carried the exchange from that interview.
Alito pushed back on the idea that politics drove the choice. He said it is too hard to predict the political climate or what any president might do with a replacement seat.
"I think I can still make a contribution."
He added that giving up the chance to do something good for the Constitution and the country is hard so long as he can keep doing the work.
Speculation about Alito’s future has followed him for months, and he has repeatedly made clear he is not walking away. Readers tracking that run of comments have seen him shut down retirement talk before and restate that he intends to remain on the bench.
The stakes are obvious. A vacancy on a Court with a durable conservative majority would set off an immediate confirmation fight. That is why false alarms travel fast.
One recent example came when NPR published and then quickly retracted a story claiming Alito was retiring. Nina Totenberg later apologized and said she misheard a reference to “retirement announcements,” wrongly assumed it was Alito, and ran with an assumption no reporter should make. The New York Post detailed the retraction, the conflicting internal explanations, and the scramble that followed.
"Dear Justice Alito, there are no words to adequately apologize for today’s error in reporting your retirement. It was entirely my fault."
That is how a major public broadcaster handled a story that, had it been true, would have reshaped the Court overnight under a Trump administration. The correction cycle only underlined how hungry parts of the press corps remain for any sign of an opening.
Alito’s own account leaves far less drama. He framed the decision as personal capacity and duty, not a partisan calculation timed to any White House.
Crawford also pressed him on rulings tied to President Donald Trump and on a recent Wall Street Journal report that Alito has sided with Trump more than any other justice on the Court. Alito rejected the suggestion that he is trying to help the president.
"I'm not trying to decide cases to help President Trump."
He said he has not decided cases in the past to help or hurt any other president or administration either, and that he absolutely sincerely believes he would have reached the same results if Trump were not in office.
That insistence matches the posture he has taken when earlier waves of exit rumors rose. Coverage of those moments has included his confirmation that he will stay on the Supreme Court even as outside voices try to read politics into every vote.
Alito also brushed aside questions about factoring his own influence into the retirement math. The through-line in his answers was institutional, not personal branding.
President George W. Bush nominated Alito. The Senate confirmed him 58-42 in January 2006 to replace Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. He has now served roughly two decades on the high court.
He authored the 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the claimed constitutional right to abortion. In that opinion he wrote that Roe was “egregiously wrong from the start.” Critics have treated that holding as proof of partisanship. Alito treats it as constitutional correction.
His public friction with progressive politics is not new. In 2010, cameras caught him mouthing “not true” during President Obama’s State of the Union criticism of the Court’s Citizens United ruling. The moment became a durable clip for his detractors. It also showed a justice unwilling to sit silently through a mischaracterization of the Court’s work.
Emergency docket rulings and Trump-related cases were part of the same CBS conversation. Alito’s posture there matched his broader claim: cases turn on law, not on who occupies the Oval Office.
For readers following the longer arc of vacancy chatter, his latest comments line up with earlier reporting that he weighed retiring this year but will stay and reassess each term rather than lock in an exit date under political pressure.
Alito’s clearest warning was about the unknown. He said the political situation is too hard to forecast, and so is any president’s choice of a successor.
"It's too hard to predict what the political situation will be, and what any president might do with respect to a replacement."
That is a sober answer from a justice who has watched nomination fights for decades. It also undercuts the popular claim that he is gaming the calendar for one party’s benefit. If the future is opaque, the rational move is to keep working while able.
He put the same idea in plain terms on his own capacity.
"And it's hard to give up the opportunity to do something that I think will be good for the Constitution and good for the country as long as I'm able to do it."
Age forces the question every term, he said. Ability answers it for now.
Separate reporting has already tracked how those reassurances landed, including pieces noting he will serve another Supreme Court term and thereby closed out months of exit speculation for the immediate cycle.
Chief Justice John Roberts and colleagues appeared at President Trump’s 2025 address to a joint session of Congress, a reminder that the Court’s public life continues alongside the country’s elected branches. Alito’s interview kept the focus on the work itself, not the ceremony around it.
Left-leaning critics will keep reading partisanship into originalist results. Media outlets will keep mishandling vacancy rumors. Alito’s recorded answers give them less to work with than they want: he thought about retiring, measured his remaining contribution, and stayed.
A justice who still believes he can defend the Constitution should keep the seat, and let the case results, not the rumor mill, do the talking.
