Justice Samuel Alito says he was amused and puzzled by a false NPR report that he was retiring and has decided to stay on the court.
In June, National Public Radio published an inaccurate story claiming Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was stepping down. The outlet quickly retracted it. In the privacy of his chambers, Alito did not panic. He did not scramble. He laughed it off.
In written answers to USA TODAY, the 76-year-old justice, the court’s second-oldest member, said the botched scoop left him “amused and puzzled.” He also made clear he is not leaving. He decided against retiring this year because he still believes he can make a valuable contribution. That stance puts to rest talk that he would step aside soon and hand President Donald Trump a fourth high-court nominee.
The same day the interview landed, Alito’s book hit shelves. The timing was no accident. The justice used the moment to defend originalism, the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, and his refusal to treat every hard case as a political land mine.
Washington jolted when the retirement story hit. Then it vanished. NPR walked it back. Weeks later, Alito publicly denied the rumors that he would leave anytime soon.
Asked about the episode, he did not rage at the press. He asked a sharper question about the people rooting for his exit.
He told the paper:
"I was amused and puzzled. I wondered what had led to the erroneous report. And when the error was corrected, I wondered how many people were crest-fallen."
That line fits a justice who has spent years under fire and still declines to perform outrage. It also tracks with earlier reporting in which Alito confirmed he is staying on the Supreme Court and shut down the latest round of exit talk.
He is a lifelong Phillies fan who grew up outside Trenton, New Jersey. He has joked that rooting for a team that rarely wins teaches a useful lesson: life is not a bed of roses, and some disappointment is normal. The retirement frenzy offered another version of the same lesson for his critics.
Alito has not pretended the job is light. He has said service on the court has brought serious threats, harassment, and vilification by political figures and the media. He has also faced what he calls spurious charges of ethical violations.
Those include the 2008 Alaska fishing trip on a private jet and the 2024 fight over flags and recusal demands tied to cases about the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack. He defended the trip. He rejected the recusal calls. He is still on the bench.
Readers who followed his recent comments know this is not a new theme. Coverage of how Alito weighed stepping down last term already showed a justice who reviews the costs each year and then returns to the work.
This year the verdict was the same. He thought he could still contribute. So he stayed. For voters who want justices who apply the Constitution instead of reading the polls, that choice matters more than any cable-news countdown clock.
Alito authored the 2022 opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the invented constitutional right to abortion. He has never treated that holding as a regret.
He said he was “honored to have the opportunity to write the opinion,” which “corrected an egregiously incorrect interpretation of the Constitution.” That is originalism stated without apology. The Constitution’s text and history, not a 1973 policy preference, control.
His new book, “So Ordered: An Originalist’s View of the Constitution, the Court, and Our Country,” published Oct. 6 by Basic Liberty, extends the same project. It adapts past speeches on his approach to law and on what he calls distinctly American values. One anecdote recounts a baseball-sized chunk of marble falling from the Supreme Court façade after President George W. Bush nominated him. A passenger on a train from New Jersey called it a sign. Alito wrote that he “didn’t interpret it quite that way.”
The book lands as he again defends Dobbs as clear originalism and rejects the claim that the Constitution created an abortion right in the first place. Critics wanted a retreat. They got a reprint.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has pressed the public-confidence argument hard. At a May legal conference she said it is “so important for the public to perceive us as neutral, nonpartisan,” adding that “public confidence is really all the judiciary has.” In a dissent last year she wrote that the court appears to have a rule that “this Administration always wins.”
Alito refused the bait. He said he has never accused a colleague of basing a vote on partisanship and does not plan to start. He trusts Jackson did not mean to level that charge either. His standard, he said, is simple: he applies the same legal rules no matter which administration is affected.
Of the major Trump cases the Supreme Court decided in 2026, Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas were the only justices who never ruled against the president, USA TODAY reported. That record will fuel more partisan storytelling. Alito’s reply is that votes follow the law, not the team jersey.
Duke Law professor Neil Siegel wrote in 2016 that Alito had become “the primary judicial voice” of Americans losing culture-war fights over gay rights, abortion, affirmative action, and religious exemptions. Alito said he “would not put it that way.” When cases touch those issues, he said, his votes rest on his understanding of the relevant law. “It is the duty of a Supreme Court justice to be a ‘voice’ for the Constitution and the laws, not for any constituency.”
Conservative author Molly Hemingway, in a biography published earlier this year, said Alito has been disappointed by the lack of urgency among some colleagues on censorship and other threats to the constitutional order. In the USA TODAY exchange he pointed to concrete examples.
He flagged the court’s recent choices not to hear challenges to admission practices at competitive high schools, practices he said appear to be a “blatant violation” of the court’s 2023 rejection of race-based college admissions. He also noted procedural dismissals in cases about Biden-era pressure on social media platforms and about state abortion bans colliding with federal health law.
His standard for taking cases was blunt:
"Our job is easier and more pleasant when we deal with technical legal issues that do not involve us in heated public controversy, but eschewing controversy is not a good reason to duck questions that richly merit our prompt review."
That is a rebuke aimed at comfort, not at courage. It also matches the through-line in prior sit-downs where Alito stood by Dobbs and rejected retirement rather than yield the field.
He has described the climate around the court in stark terms, threats, harassment, media vilification, and ethics complaints he calls baseless. He worries that younger colleagues and future nominees will face the same pressure for years, and that families will have to count the cost before anyone accepts a nomination.
Even so, the justice who once held firm on Dobbs, threats, and why he stays is not writing a resignation letter. He is publishing a book, answering questions, and showing up for the next argument calendar.
Bush put him on the court in a confirmation fight that ended in 2006. Two decades later, the same justice is still telling readers the job is to read the Constitution as law, not as a mood ring for the loudest faction in the press.
False retirement scoops will keep coming for as long as activist media wants a different court. Alito’s answer is the one constitutionalists prefer: do the work, apply the same rules, and leave when the work is done, not when the narrative demands it.
