Sandra Day O’Connor, The First Woman Justice On The US Supreme Court, Dies At 93

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, died Dec. 1 in Phoenix.

O’Connor, who was 93, died due to complications related to advanced dementia and a respiratory illness, according to the court, per a Washington Post report.

O’Connor was a pioneer for women professionals and passed on her legacy of civic engagement and enduring legal interpretations.

Throughout her tenure on the Supreme Court, the conservative justice championed numerous causes and ruled on several landmark cases:


• Gender Equality: One of her first decisions on the court was Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan. She delivered the majority opinion, which ruled that the female-only policy of the university violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. 
• Women’s Rights: One of her well-known swing votes defied her Republican party in reaffirming the Roe v. Wade decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992.
• Voting Rights: In Morse v. Republication Party of Virginia, O’Connor joined the majority, which ruled that key anti-discrimination provisions of the Voting Rights Act apply to the political conventions that choose party candidates. 
• Bush v. Gore: The court heard the case on the 2000 Presidential Election vote certification made by Florida’s Secretary of State. The court let it stand for Republican candidate George W. Bush, who won the state’s 25 electoral votes, which gave Bush 271 electoral votes to Democrat Al Gore’s 267 electoral votes. O’Connor concurred with the majority. In retirement, she said that the court should not have taken the case.
• Gay Rights: In Lawrence v. Texas, the court overturned a 1986 ruling against gay sex. In a separate concurring opinion, O’Connor wrote the state’s sodomy laws create unequal treatment under the law. 
• Wrote the majority opinion for Grutter v. Bollinger upholding affirmative action at the University of Michigan Law School. “Effective participation by members of all racial and ethnic groups in the civic life of our nation is essential if the dream of one nation, indivisible, is to be realized,” she wrote.

O’Connor was on the court from 1981 to 2006 — but her journey there was not without struggle.

Having obtained her law…