(CBS News)- Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy has announced he will retire. He notified President Trump in a letter Wednesday, telling him that effective July 31, he would “end my regular active status as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, while continuing to serve in a senior status.”

Kennedy called it the “highest of honors to serve on this Court,” and he expressed his “profound gratitude for having had the privilege to seek in each case how best to know, interpret, and defend the Constitution and the laws that must always conform to its mandates and promises.”

Here is the letter he sent to President Trump.