NPR Retracts Report Claiming Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito Plans To Retire

NPR’s most recent article put the judicial world in a frenzy.

On Tuesday, NPR released a report claiming Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is planning to retire.

There’s a major problem though!

Alito is not retiring.

NPR has since retracted their article and explained how the blunder came to be.

Read NPR’s retraction here:

NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg misheard an announcement about retirements as she was leaving the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday. As a result, an NPR headline erroneously claimed that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was retiring. The headline sat atop a lengthy story that recapped the conservative justice’s tenure. The error was also reported on NPR’s airwaves.

Alito is not retiring. The story was wrong. Here’s how it happened.

Totenberg was reporting on the final day of the Supreme Court session on Tuesday. As she was leaving the court, Chief Justice John Roberts was announcing upcoming retirements. Totenberg wondered why everyone else wasn’t leaving and asked someone outside the court. According to her interview that same day on All Things Considered, Totenberg asked a bystander what was going on, and the person replied “retirement announcements.” But Totenberg heard the reply in the singular, “announcement, ” and assumed it was the notice that Alito was retiring.

NPR had the lengthy story about Alito’s retirement already written, because that’s what newsrooms do in anticipation of significant retirements and even deaths.

Totenberg spoke with both her intern, who was at the court with her, and NPR Executive Editor Krishnadev Calamur and told them what she heard. Calamur surfaced the story that NPR had previously prepared for the day Alito did announce his retirement and published it. The information was also broadcast on NPR’s airwaves. NPR was offering special live coverage of the court’s decision on the birthright citizenship case.

“We profoundly regret the error and the confusion that this has caused and Nina has reached out to Alito to apologize personally,” Calamur told me.

The report was supposed to be published on Friday according to the image’s alt-text:

According to the image's alt-text the article was supposed to go out on Friday pic.twitter.com/jWdjrmaIue

— Reddit Lies (@reddit_lies) June 30, 2026

AP News reported Alito previously denied any plans to retire earlier in the year:

Speculation had swirled about the justice’s future plans earlier this year, but Fox News and CBS reported this spring that he planned to remain on the bench.

Alito has been on the court since 2006, when he replaced Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. He was nominated by President George W. Bush, a Republican.

McBride, in her column, said she didn’t expect the mistake to endure in the public consciousness.

“For most news consumers, the error is a blip, something that flashed across their feed or they heard on their radio,” she wrote. “It was corrected quickly and will not have lasting consequences.”