'Confusion' at the Supreme Court after NPR retracts story on Alito’s retirement

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito did not announce his retirement, despite reporting from National Public Radio on Friday.

CNN's Paula Reid commented that the "wonderful colleagues at NPR have erroneously put a story out saying that Justice Alito plans to retire."

"Editors Note: Earlier today we erroneously published a story saying that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was retiring. He has not announced his retirement, and we have retracted the story," the NPR story now reads.

Politico's Josh Gerstein cited a statement from the Supreme Court spokesperson Patricia McCabe saying, "NPR's reporting regarding Justice Alito is inaccurate. And their reporting that there was any kind of court statement is inaccurate."

There have been rumors about Alito and colleague Justice Clarence Thomas, suggesting that the two men would want to retire under a presidency that more closely matches their ideology, so that they would be replaced by like-minded judges. However, nothing has been announced or set in stone.

Alito wasn't on the bench Tuesday as his colleagues read opinions. He, along with Justice Neil Gorsuch, skipped the final day of the High Court's session, leaving only Thomas present to read the group's dissents. Thomas refrained, however.

David Daley wrote for The Nation on Tuesday that a "strategic Alito retirement" would be a "democratic disaster." It would put a nail in the coffin of the claim by Chief Justice John Roberts that the Court "isn't political."

"Yet now, as a term that has demonstrated the Court’s centrality to the Republican political project approaches its end, attention has turned to a question that strips any remaining pretense of judicial neutrality away," he wrote.

Alito was hospitalized in March. The court announced several weeks later that he was taken to the hospital "after becoming ill ... at a Federalist Society dinner in Philadelphia.”

He was given fluids and sent home.

The 76-year-old justice, nominated by former President George W. Bush, has been on the Court for 20 years this year and is consistently among the most far-right. He and his wife were caught on tape by liberal documentarian Lauren Windsor saying that the right must "win" on all of the culture war issues and that he cannot compromise with the political left. He went on to agree that the United States must return to a "place of godliness," which sparked concern about whether or not he is truly an impartial justice.

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