WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates hardened their positions yesterday on blocking a move by President Barack Obama to fill the Supreme Court seat left by the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, a lifetime appointment that would help decide some of the most divisive issues facing Americans.
The next justice could tilt the balance of the nation’s highest court, which was left with four conservatives and four liberals. The vacancy quickly became an issue in the 2016 presidential race.
“We ought to make the 2016 election a referendum on the Supreme Court,” U.S. Senator and Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
The normally nine-justice court is set to decide this year its first major abortion case in nearly a decade, as well as cases on voting rights, affirmative action and immigration.
Scalia, 79, died on Saturday at a West Texas resort. The cause of death will not be determined for several days, the top official in the county where he died, Presidio County Judge Cinderela Gueara, said yesterday in an interview with local TV station WFAA-TV.
Obama, a Democrat, will nominate someone to fill the empty seat but will wait until the U.S. Senate is back in session, the White House said yesterday. The Senate returns from recess on Feb. 22.
“At that point, we expect the Senate to consider that nominee, consistent with their responsibilities laid out in the United States Constitu-tion,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz said.
The White House declined to give a more specific timeline for Obama to announce his nominee. The nomination will set up a battle with the Republican-controlled chamber, which must approve any nominee.
Shortly after news of Scalia’s death, Republicans vowed not to act on the vacancy until Obama’s successor takes office next January. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said failure to act would be a “shameful abdication” of the Senate’s constitutional duty.
Both sides said history was on their side.
Reid said it would be unprecedented to have a vacancy on the court for a year. In the modern era, the longest Supreme Court vacancy was 363 days after Abe Fortas resigned in May 1969.
Republicans cited 80 years of tradition in which no Supreme Court nominees were approved in presidential election years. In fact, Justice Anthony Kennedy was approved in 1988, after a bruising battle in which the Senate rejected President Ronald Reagan’s first nominee, conservative Robert Bork.