President Joe Biden will nominate federal appeals court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, the White House said, making her the first Black woman selected to serve on a court that once declared her race unworthy of citizenship and endorsed segregation.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday Biden could begin meeting with top contenders as early as next week, noting that such interviews typically happen at the end of the vetting process. She said the president remains on track for an announcement by the end of the month.

According to the National Association for Law Placement, Black women made up 3.17% of associates at America’s law firms in 2021 but less than 1% of partners. Women of color overall made up nearly 16% of associates at America’s law firms but only about 4% of the partners.

In a White House ceremony marking a moment of national transition, President Joe Biden praised retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, who will have spent nearly 28 years on the high court by the time he leaves at the end of the term, as “a model public servant at a time of great division in this country.”

Liberal Justice Stephen Breyer will retire, giving Presoemt Joe Biden the first Supreme Court pick of his presidency.

The conservative-dominated Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a challenge to the consideration of race in college admissions, adding affirmative action to major cases on abortion, guns, religion and COVID-19 already on the agenda.

The court's conservative majority concluded the administration overstepped its authority by seeking to impose the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's vaccine-or-test rule on U.S. businesses with at least 100 employees.

Fully vaccinated and mostly masked, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared skeptical Friday of the Biden administration’s authority to impose a vaccine-or-testing requirement on the nation’s large employers. 

Former President Donald Trump turned to the Supreme Court on Thursday in a last-ditch effort to keep documents away from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol led by his supporters.

The Supreme Court says it will hold a special session in just over two weeks to weigh challenges to two Biden administration policies covering vaccine requirements for millions of workers, policies that affect large employers and health care workers.

The court acted more than a month after hearing arguments over the law, which makes no exceptions for rape or incest.

The case being argued Wednesday comes from Mississippi, where a 2018 law would ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, well before viability. The Supreme Court has never allowed states to ban abortion before the point at roughly 24 weeks when a fetus can survive outside the womb.

A majority of the Supreme Court signaled Monday they would allow abortion providers to pursue a court challenge to a Texas law that has virtually ended abortion in the nation’s second-largest state after six weeks of pregnancy.

The Supreme Court is allowing the Texas law that bans most abortions to remain in place, but has agreed to hear arguments in the case in early November.

The Biden administration is asking the Supreme Court to block the Texas law banning most abortions, while the fight over the measure’s constitutionality plays out in the courts.

A one-page order by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued late Friday reinstated the nation’s strictest abortion law, which bans abortions once cardiac activity is detected, usually around six weeks. It makes no exceptions in cases of rape or incest.