Only 5 of the 9 U.S. Supreme Court justices attended President Joe Biden's State of the Union address on Tuesday night.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch were not present at the speech, the Washington Examiner reported.
Sotomayor, who was nominated by then-President Barack Obama, was the only one of the four associate justices not nominated by a Republican president.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson did attend the State of the Union. Jackson was nominated by Biden last year.
Sotomayor has not attended a State of the Union since 2016, the Examiner reported.
Alito, author of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade, has not attended the annual event since 2010, when he mouthed the words "not true" as Obama denounced the high court's Citizens United v. FEC ruling on campaign finance.
Thomas hasn't attended a State of the Union address since 2006.
"I don't go because it has become so partisan and it's very uncomfortable for a judge to sit there," Thomas told students in 2010 at Stetson University College of Law in Gulfport, Florida. "There's a lot that you don't hear on TV."
Gorsuch has attended three State of the Union speeches as an associate justice but has missed both by Biden.
Former Justices Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer also attended Biden's speech. That marked the first time a former justice was at a State of the Union since Byron White attended then-President Bill Clinton's speech in February 1997.
During the speech, Biden called on Congress to "restore the right the Supreme Court took away last year and codify Roe v. Wade to protect every woman's constitutional right to choose."
The Supreme Court last summer voted 6-3 in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization to return the abortion issue to the states.
At the start of his speech, Biden looked at Roberts and joked that the chief justice should make a "court order" for the president to attend the Super Bowl with first lady Jill Biden.
"By the way, chief justice, I may need a court order," Biden said in an opening joke. "She gets to go to the game ... next week. I have to stay home. Gotta work something out here."
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