Biden to speak at Sandra Day O'Connor funeral

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Joe Biden and Chief Justice John Roberts will deliver remarks on Tuesday at the funeral of Sandra Day O'Connor, the U.S. Supreme Court's first female justice, at the National Cathedral in Washington.

Tributes to O'Connor, who died on Dec. 1 at age 93, will also be delivered by historian Evan Thomas and O'Connor's son Jay O'Connor, according to the cathedral's program.

O'Connor's body lay in repose on Monday in the great hall of the Supreme Court in Washington, where all nine current justices attended a private ceremony before the public was invited to pay their respects.

A centrist on the court who was appointed by Republican President Ronald Reagan in 1981, O'Connor served until her retirement in 2006.

O'Connor died in Phoenix, Arizona, of complications related to advanced dementia and a respiratory illness.

Although a conservative, she became the court's ideological center, with a knack for building consensus that helped her control decisions on the most contentious issues of her era.

She created a critical alliance in 1992 to affirm the central holding in Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that made abortion legal nationwide. She also was a crucial vote in 2003 to uphold campus affirmative action policies that were used to increase the number of underrepresented minority students at American colleges.

The Supreme Court, which now has a 6-3 conservative majority, overturned the Roe ruling in 2022, and in June struck down race-conscious admissions programs in higher education, effectively prohibiting affirmative action.

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)