How Many Women Have Served on the Supreme Court?

Six women have served as justices on the Supreme Court of the United States since it was created in 1789, out of 116 justices in the Court’s history.¹ Four of them sit on the Court today. The six, in the order they were appointed, are Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. No woman has ever served as Chief Justice.

Every one of them was appointed within the last 45 years. The first, O’Connor, did not take her seat until 1981, nearly two centuries after the Court began hearing cases.²

Sandra Day O’Connor (1981–2006)

O’Connor became the first woman on the Supreme Court when the Senate confirmed her 99–0 on September 21, 1981.³ President Reagan had promised during his 1980 campaign to appoint a woman and did so when Justice Potter Stewart retired.⁴

Before reaching the Court, O’Connor had served in all three branches of Arizona state government. She was an assistant attorney general, the first woman anywhere in the country to lead a state senate as majority leader, and a judge on the Arizona Court of Appeals.³ During her 24 years on the bench she frequently cast the deciding vote in closely divided cases. She retired in January 2006, citing her husband John’s worsening Alzheimer’s disease, and died on December 1, 2023, at 93.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1993–2020)

Ginsburg was confirmed 96–3 and sworn in on August 10, 1993. Before her appointment she had been a law professor and civil rights litigator, helping launch the Women’s Rights Project at the ACLU in the early 1970s. Arguing before an all-male Supreme Court, she won five of the six gender-discrimination cases she brought there.

One of her signature majority opinions was United States v. Virginia (1996), which struck down the Virginia Military Institute’s male-only admissions policy. Writing for a 7–1 Court, she held that the government must show an “exceedingly persuasive justification” for any gender-based classification.⁵ As the Court shifted to the right in later years, Ginsburg became equally known for her dissents. She served 27 years and died on September 18, 2020, at 87.

Sonia Sotomayor (2009–present)

Sotomayor is the first Hispanic justice and the third woman on the Court. President Obama nominated her in May 2009, and the Senate confirmed her on August 6 by a vote of 68–31.⁶

Her path ran through both levels of the federal trial and appellate system. President George H.W. Bush appointed her to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in 1992, and President Clinton elevated her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1998.⁶

Elena Kagan (2010–present)

Kagan, the fourth woman appointed, was nominated by President Obama on May 10, 2010. She had never been a judge before joining the Court. Her career instead ran through academia and government: she became the first woman to serve as dean of Harvard Law School in 2003, and in 2009 President Obama made her the first female Solicitor General of the United States, the government’s top advocate before the Supreme Court.⁷

Amy Coney Barrett (2020–present)

Barrett became the fifth woman on the Court through a rapid confirmation in October 2020. President Trump nominated her on September 26, one week after Justice Ginsburg’s death and roughly a month before the presidential election. The Senate confirmed her on October 26 by a 52–48 vote.⁸

She spent 15 years as a law professor at Notre Dame Law School, where she had earned her own law degree. President Trump appointed her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in 2017, and she served there three years before her elevation.²

Ketanji Brown Jackson (2022–present)

Jackson is the sixth woman and the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court. President Biden nominated her on February 25, 2022, and the Senate confirmed her on April 7 by a vote of 53–47.⁹

Her background includes experience no other sitting justice shares. She spent two years as a federal public defender in Washington, D.C., representing people who could not afford a lawyer. She later served as a trial judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after being appointed by President Obama, and was elevated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 2021. In her Senate questionnaire responses, Jackson described her judicial approach as applying the law to the facts “in a straightforward, neutral manner, without bias or any preconceived notion of how the matter is going to turn out.”¹⁰

Why It Took So Long

For nearly 200 years the Supreme Court was an exclusively male institution, and not for lack of candidates. Florence Allen, who became the first woman on a federal appellate court in 1934, was recommended for the Supreme Court by four presidents from both parties across three decades. None appointed her. Allen was realistic about her chances, once saying she knew a Supreme Court appointment “will never happen to a woman while I am living.”

She was right. The barrier did not fall until Reagan nominated O’Connor in 1981, and even then progress was slow. Twelve years passed before a second woman joined. Only since 2010 have three or more women served together, and the current four-justice group is the most there have ever been at one time. Across the full history of the Court, six women out of 116 justices means women account for just over five percent of everyone who has ever held the job.¹

1
Supreme Court of the United States. The Court as an Institution
2
Supreme Court of the United States. Justices 1789 to Present
3
The U.S. National Archives. President Ronald Reagans Nomination of Sandra Day OConnor to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, August 19, 1981
4
Supreme Court of the United States. Sandra Day OConnor First Woman on the Supreme Court – Appointment to the Supreme Court
5
Law.Cornell.Edu. United States v Virginia et al
6
United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court – Sonia Sotomayor
7
United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court – Elena Kagan
8
U.S. Senate. Roll Call Vote 116th Congress – 2nd Session
9
U.S. Senate. Roll Call Vote 117th Congress – 2nd Session
10
United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Response of Ketanji B Jackson Nominee to be United States District Judge for the District of Columbia to the Written Questions