Retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman on the Supreme Court, has died at 93, the Associated Press is reporting.
The court says she died in Phoenix on Friday, of complications related to advanced dementia and a respiratory illness. In 2018 she announced a diagnosis of the "beginning stages of dementia."
In 2018, she announced that she had been diagnosed with “the beginning stages of dementia, probably Alzheimer’s disease.”
The Arizona native joined the court in 1981 as a nominee of President Ronald Reagan, becoming the first woman on the Supreme Court in its nearly 200 years of existence at that time.
“I had never expected or aspired to be a Supreme Court justice,” she said. “My first year on the court made me long at times for obscurity.”
