June 27 (UPI) — Justice Anthony Kennedy on Wednesday notified President Donald Trump he is retiring from the U.S. Supreme Court after three decades on the panel.
Kennedy, 81, told the president and his colleagues he will step down July 31.
“For a member of the legal profession it is the highest on honors to serve on this court,” he wrote. “Please permit me by this letter to express my profound gratitude for having had the privilege to seek in each case how best to know, interpret and defend the Constitution and the laws that must always conform to its mandates and promises.”
Former President Ronald Reagan nominated Kennedy to the high court in 1987 and he was sworn in on Feb. 18, 1988.
