President Joe Biden on Thursday said that a Black woman on the US Supreme Court bench has been long overdue. He and a retiring Justice Stephen Breyer spoke from the White House, where the commander-in-chief also described the 83-year-old liberal as a model public servant. 

With Breyer retiring, Biden will have the opportunity to make first pick for the Supreme Court bench, where the conservatives outnumber the liberals 6-3. He had during his run for the President pledged to place a first Black woman on the apex bench. Since taking office in January 2021, the Democrat has already installed five Black women on federal appeals courts, with three more nominations pending before the Senate.

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“I’ve made no decision except the one person I will nominate will  someone with extraordinary qualifications, character, experience and integrity,” Biden said as Breyer stood by.

“And that person will be the first Black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court. It’s long overdue.”

By the end of his first year, Biden had won confirmation of 40 judges, the most since President Ronald Reagan. Of those, 80% are women and 53% are people of color, according to the White House.

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Meanwhile, Justice Stephen Breyer made his retirement official. In a letter to the President, he said that his resignation would take effect at the end of the term, “assuming the by then my successor has been nominated and confirmed”.

Breyer’s former clerk Ketanji Brown Jackson 51, is currently seen as his most likely successor. She has worked at the US Sentencing Commission and has been a federal trial court judge since 2013 in the District of Columbia. Biden met Brown on Thursday. 

U.S. District Judge J. Michelle Childs and California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger are others in contention, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss White House deliberations. Jackson and Kruger have long been seen as possible nominees.

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Jackson, 51, was nominated by President Barack Obama to be a district court judge. Biden elevated her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Early in her career, she was also a law clerk for Breyer. Biden has already met with her personally, he interviewed her for her current post.

Childs, a federal judge in South Carolina, has been nominated but not yet confirmed to serve on the same circuit court. Her name has surfaced partly because she is a favorite among some high-profile lawmakers, including Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C.

Kruger, a graduate of Harvard and of Yale’s law school, was previously a Supreme Court clerk and has argued a dozen cases before the justices as a lawyer for the federal government.

With inputs from Associated Press