Retired Supreme Court Justice to Help Decide Multiple Cases

Associate Justice Stephen Breyer sits during a group photograph of the justices at the Supreme Court in Washington on April 23, 2021. Erin Schaff/Pool/Getty Images

Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is going to hear cases as part of panels in January 2025, according to a newly disclosed calendar.

Breyer, who stepped down from the nation’s top court in 2022, is going to sit on three-judge panels for nine cases, the calendar from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit shows.

The cases include an appeal from a man convicted of assaulting an FBI agent as his home was searched and an appeal from a former Haitian mayor who was ordered to pay $15.5 million after being found responsible for the killing of one person and the torture of two others.

Breyer, 86, is slated to hear cases inside the circuit court’s courtroom in Boston on Jan. 8 and Jan. 9.

The panels combined include four other judges, including David Barron, the chief judge of the circuit court.

Breyer in 2022 retired after nearly 28 years as a member of the Supreme Court. He was nominated to the court by President Bill Clinton. His stepping down opened up a vacancy filled by President Joe Biden’s sole Supreme Court nominee, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, 54.

Breyer earlier this year said he would likely still hear cases following his retirement.

“I’m a judge. If you take senior status, you remain a judge. And not only do you remain a judge in terms of status, but probably next fall I will go over and sit with the First Circuit,” he said during an appearance on a podcast. “So I’m still an active judge.”

Breyer was a judge with the circuit court from December 1980 through August 1994, when he was elevated to the Supreme Court. Breyer was the circuit court’s chief judge for four years.

The First Circuit takes appeals from cases based in four states—Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island—and Puerto Rico. It has just five judges, with one current vacancy, making it the smallest of the nation’s 13 federal appeals courts.

Many Supreme Court justices either die while still serving on the bench or choose not to hear cases after retiring. Retired Justice Anthony Kennedy, 88, has not sat to hear cases since stepping down in 2018. The only other living retired justice, David Souter, 85, did for years sit with panels of the First Circuit following his 2009 retirement.