Clarence Thomas

2021 official photo.

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Clarence Thomas (1948–) is a radical wingnut, homophobe,^[3] diversity hire, and member of the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS). He is also the second African American to be elevated to the Supreme Court (he succeeded the first, Thurgood Marshall).

In his early years, he was seen as little more than an echo of Antonin Scalia (as of 2014, Scalia and Thomas voted together 91% of the time),^[4] the most conservative member of the court. However, over the years, Thomas has become more vocal and started staking out positions often further to the right than even Scalia.^[5] Not coincidentally, in 2023, multiple reports detailed how Thomas had, over his period as a Supreme Court justice, increasingly participated with and received benefits and "gifts" from multiple right-wing activists (ranging from the Federalist Society to the Koch brothers network). These revelations led one political analyst (David Rothkopf) to declare in a September 2023 tweet that "there is no doubt any more" that Thomas is one of the most corrupt Supreme Court justices in America's history.^[6]

Justice Thomas hasn't been big on giving the world glimpses into his thought processes. With alarming consistency, he cosigned whatever Nino said, with no further comment. Like a solar eclipse or the bloom of a corpse flower, the release of an actual opinion from Justice Thomas is a rare event noteworthy for that fact alone. Perhaps we should all be grateful the man does not attempt self-expression on a more regular basis. (Gay marriage is worse than slavery!)^[7]

Confirmation controversies[edit]

Anita Hill before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

George H.W. Bush could've nominated Chris Rock to the SCOTUS and gotten him on the bench, as he was still high on his post-Gulf War victory and approval ratings. Unfortunately, Thomas was less qualified than Chris Rock to be nominated for the court.^[9] It's almost as if it was a purely-political appointment designed to help wage the GOP's culture wars without any regard to the court's proper function or purpose. It was constantly brought up during his confirmation that he wasn't a worthy successor to the meritorious Thurgood Marshall and there were a large number of more qualified judges, as Thomas was alarmingly mediocre.

During his confirmation hearings, Anita Hill, a former clerk of his, stepped forward and claimed to have been sexually harassed by Thomas. Conservatives blasted her, even calling her "a little bit slutty and a little bit nutty."^[10] Many liberals rallied to her defense, especially women's groups. In the end, despite a Democratic majority in the Senate, Thomas was approved for the Supreme Court. Many said that Ted Kennedy, a high-ranking member of the Judiciary Committee who played a key role in spiking the nomination of the similarly extreme conservative judge Robert Bork just a few years earlier, was personally unable to do anything about Thomas due to his own marital issues in that area.

Well-he-did-not[edit]

On February 22, 2006, he spoke from the bench. He didn't say a word from there to any lawyer until 2013 when he responded to Justice Scalia's comment about a lawyer attending Yale Law school. Thomas said, "Well, he did not." Although some say he purposely said that,^[11] others think he was really making a side joke to Antonin Scalia.^[12] Whatever it is, Thomas has not asked a question from the bench in court. For over 10 years he has done nothing but stare at the ceiling.^[13] Thomas' written record is quite voluminous, so one can find out what he thinks (and it's quite ugly).^[8]:1-16 It may be that he just chooses not to ask questions because he doesn't want to know the answers as his mind is already made up. It is a nice ceiling. So, in fifty years, when your grandchildren ask you, "Did Clarence Thomas do a good job?" you can answer "Well, he did not."

Corruption — So What![edit]

l-to-r: Thomas, filmmaker Ken Burns and David Koch at Bohemian Grove in 2019^[14][15]

Thomas is perhaps the most corrupt Supreme Court justice in recent memory. He has spent 20 years filing false financial statements, a crime that he will likely never be convicted of due to his position of power and the political gridlock in Congress.^[16] Furthermore, he did not recuse himself from the Citizens United case despite Citizens United having spent $100,000 on his behalf to support his nomination to the court.^[17]

Virginia "Ginni" Thomas (Clarence Thomas' wife) received $686,589 in salary from the right-wing Heritage Foundation between 2003 and 2007. He failed to disclose this originally, answering "none" on a form asking about his spouse's non-investment income. The Los Angeles Times and Common Cause reported about it in 2011.^[18][19] Clarence Thomas claimed that this was "inadvertently omitted due to a misunderstanding of the filing instructions", which Bob Edgar of Common Cause called "implausible".^[20]

Thomas is a close "friend" of real estate magnate Harlan Crow, a major Republican donor, member of the American Enterprise Institute, and donor to the Federalist Society;^[21] this relationship, and the gifts and largesse Crow has showered on Thomas, has caused ethical concerns as far back as 2011.^[22] In April 2023, it was revealed that during Thomas' Supreme Court tenure, Crow frequently took Thomas on private luxury trips using his private super-yacht and his private jet airplane to places like Crow's private resort in the Adirondacks, visits to the Bohemian Grove, and other locations around the world. These trips appeared nowhere on Thomas' financial disclosures, potentially violating the law.^[21] Additionally, in May 2023, it was revealed that Crow had paid at least some of the private boarding school tuition fees^{[note 2]} for a grandnephew of Thomas named Mark Martin (whom Thomas had taken custody of); this also was not disclosed in the annual financial statements of Thomas.^[23] Thomas originally did disclose some of these gifts from Crow; however, he ceased disclosing them after the Los Angeles Times reported on them in a 2004 article.^[24] Thomas also failed to disclose a 2014 real estate deal in which Crow purchased multiple properties from Thomas and his family.^[25][26][27]

Crow is also a Hitler fetishist, which does not in-and-of-itself make him a Nazi. He has a room in his house that is full of original Hitler artifacts, including an autographed copy of Mein Kampf. Although the items are stored in a museum-type setting, as would befit a billionaire, there is essentially no context or curation, leaving the casual viewer to draw their own conclusions about intent.^[28] According to one viewer, there was one painting "done by George W. Bush next to a Norman Rockwell next to one by Hitler,"^[28] in what could charitably be described as a kitsch triptych.

Another wealthy friend of Thomas' is Anthony Welters, who made his fortune in the healthcare industry. With the help of Welters, Thomas purchased a $267,230 recreational vehicle. Unlike with Crow, Thomas and Welters met before Thomas became a judge — in 1980, when they were both congressional staffers.^[29][30]

In September 2023, it was revealed that Thomas had also attended donor summits sponsored by libertarian billionaires Charles and David Koch, including at least one of the dinners reserved for top-tier donors. These dinners were arranged with the help of Leonard Leo, leader of the Federalist Society. As with the above, these dinners were not disclosed by Thomas. In addition to the donor summit appearances, reportedly Thomas developed a personal relationship with the Koch brothers via Thomas' repeated trips to Bohemian Grove. Due to the Koch brothers' heavy influence in conservative politics, this brought further questions into Thomas' impartiality.

Of particular concern was a then-pending case on the court called Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo that sought to overturn a previous case (Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.) which gave broad power to federal agencies to interpret laws and craft policies. The Koch family have long bitterly opposed this regulation; Koch network staff attorneys even represented the plaintiffs of the Loper case.^[14][31] Thomas notably was a strong supporter of the Chevron deference in his early career, even writing an opinion upholding the doctrine in 2005; however, by 2020, he was publicly critical of both the Chevron deference and his earlier 2005 ruling on the subject. This suggested to critics a possible quid pro quo situation in which, while not directly involving bribery, Thomas was groomed by deregulatory extremists to support positions that they benefited from.^[14][32] Unsurprisingly, on June 28 2024, Thomas voted with the all-conservative majority (6-3) to overturn the Chevron decision.^[33]

On July 9 2023, the New York Times published a report detailing Thomas' membership in the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans. Through this organization, Thomas had reportedly received benefits from a broad cohort of wealthy and powerful figures, many of them major donors to conservative causes. Such figures included executives like David L. Sokol, Wayne Huizenga, Paul "Tony" Novelly, and Dennis Washington. In August 2023, ProPublica unveiled another expose which detailed some of the unreported largesse by these executives; these included at least 38 destination vacations, 26 private jet flights, and a dozen VIP passes to professional and college sporting events. Reportedly Thomas had granted this society unusual access to the Supreme Court facilities, in that an annual awards ceremony was hosted in the courtroom every year. The society also helped bankroll a hagiographic documentary about Thomas made in response to the controversies over Anita Hill's allegations.^[34][35][36]

Shortly after the New York Times report, another story came out in the Guardian where several lawyers who had business before the Supreme Court made payments to Rajan Vasisht, Thomas' aide from July 2019 to July 2021, via Venmo. These lawyers included a Federalist Society member named Patrick Strawbridge,^[37] who at the time of the article had recently successfully argued in the Supreme Court to end affirmative action admissions at universities.^[38][39] The purported purpose of the payments seemed to refer to a Christmas party Thomas hosted in 2019. However, the fact that a Supreme Court justice was collecting money from lawyers in private practice that had business before the court was seen by some legal experts as very ethically questionable, regardless of the purported purpose.^[40]

Reportedly, the financial largesse towards Thomas started around 2000, when Thomas started complaining to prominent conservatives about his financial situation. Although Thomas' salary was high by average American standards ($173,600), he was one of the least independently wealthy members of the Supreme Court, and opportunities existed in the private sector that would pay even higher than that. In a conversation with a Republican member of Congress in January 2000, Thomas hinted that should Congress not give the Supreme Court justices a pay raise, "one or more justices will leave soon". This raised serious concerns in Republican circles that Thomas (or Antonin Scalia, another one of the least independently wealthy justices at that time) would resign for financial reasons, thus potentially changing the look of the Supreme Court.^[41]

Known people and organizations who gave gifts and cash benefits to Clarence and Ginni Thomas (who must have expected somthing in return):^[42]

All of this shit eventually became too much, because the dribs and drabs that of what Thomas was compelled to report as gifts was still the tip of the iceberg on the billionaire gifts that Thomas still had not reported. In July 2024, Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) wrote a detailed to the US Justice Department, asking the department "…to investigate potential criminal violations by Justice Thomas under the disclosure, false statement, and tax laws…"^[15] The now-known undisclosed donations to Thomas that are still unreported by him begin with a 2003 yacht trip to Russia funded by Crow going through 2021.^[15]

Thomas for president?[edit]

In 2012, some Republicans, not thrilled with the crop of candidates, began suggesting that should the nomination come down to a brokered convention, Thomas would be a possible choice for president.^[44]

Moonlighting[edit]

Thomas was one of many Supreme Court Justices to have officiated at a wedding,^[45] his gig being the marriage of Rush Limbaugh and "aerobics instructor" Marta Maranda Fitzgerald on 27 May 1994. The wedding was held in Thomas' home in Virginia. The couple divorced in 2004.^[46] Thomas also attended Limbaugh's next wedding to Kathryn Rogers in June 2010, but he was not working that one, just partying.^[47]

Better displays of Thomas[edit]

Not originalist

On 18 June 2015, Thomas joined his Supreme Court liberal colleagues in ruling in favor of Texas rejecting license plate designs that feature the Confederate flag. A Texas board found "a significant portion of the public associate the Confederate flag with organizations advocating expressions of hate directed toward people or groups".^[48][49]

Thomas has also argued that the federal government cannot ban medical marijuana, although he believes this for reasons of state's rights and not because he personally favors the policy.^[50]

Black nationalist[edit]

Corey Robin, in his book The Enigma of Clarence Thomas, argued that Thomas' ultra-conservatism is fundamentally rooted in black nationalist ideas, specifically a belief that racism is too deep-rooted in the white American psyche to even try to correct, leading him to conclude that black people should be establishing self-reliance separate from white America and that measures supporting racial integration ultimately amount to "white paternalism" that leave black people worse off.^[51][8] Thomas' black nationalism is one that is misogynist and sees the role of the black woman as subservient to the black man.^{[8]:28,150[52]}

Thomas' views of the Constitution are rooted in a tension between what Robin calls the "White Constitution" (the original Constitution of 1787 plus the Bill of Rights of 1789) and the "Black Constitution" (the Constitution through the three Reconstruction amendments).^[8]:168 This tension supports Thomas' idealized view of his grandfather's time. Myers Anderson (1907–1983),^[53] who raised him as his son,^[54] spent most of his life (and most of Thomas' formative years) in the Jim Crow South where the Reconstruction amendments had been effectively nullified. Thomas' dystopian view of African American life is that all that is needed to protect the African American family is the First (particularly commercial speech) and Second Amendments (gun ownership)^{[8]:129-131,182} and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Nonetheless, these protections did nothing to protect African Americans from the 1921 Tulsa race massacre that wiped out an entire African American business district or from the long and ugly history of lynchings. Thomas has written in SCOTUS judgments that the Eighth Amendment ("no cruel or unusual punishment") does not apply to states and that the Eighth Amendment only applies to penalties (time served) and not to how prisoners are treated after they are incarcerated.^[8]:197-198 Given the high rates of African American imprisonment,^[55] this is effectively a States' rights-type argument that enables white supremacy.^[8]:215-218 In Thomas' worldview, the harsh punishment and policing that he supports helps to protect African American neighborhoods from crime,^[8]:209 it is a sort of immanentizing of dystopia.

Anti-vaxxer[edit]

Thomas wrote the dissenting opinion in the New York healthcare worker lawsuit that demanded a religious exemption to the COVID-19 vaccination mandate.^[56] In the dissent, Thomas repeated the anti-vaxxer claim that "all available COVID–19 vaccines because they were developed using cell lines derived from aborted children."^[56]:1-2 While it is true that vaccine research has based upon the HEK cell line that originally came from an aborted fetus,^[57][58] it is also true that the vast majority of modern medicines are based on research on the HEK cell line,^[58] so it is likely that Thomas himself has benefited from these medicines and vaccines. Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch signed onto this anti-science opinion.

Anti-abortion[edit]

In Thomas' concurring opinion in Box v. Planned Parenthood, he falsely claimed that the modern birth control movement was linked to the American eugenics movement, further intimating that it was a form of the black genocide conspiracy theory.^[59][60][61] Thomas repeated these false claims in his concurring opinion for Dobbs v. Jackson that struck down Roe v. Wade, disregarding stare decisis.^[62]

Black and white together[edit]

Thomas was among the first group of African Americans to integrate into the College of the Holy Cross in 1968. Thomas and his classmates formed the Black Student Union.^[8]:13,26-27 One of the points in their manifesto was:^[8]:26-27

Thomas was known to be particularly strident about anti-miscegenation, even to the point of verbally harassing interracial couples on campus.^[8]:27 Thomas was, in fact, opposed to interracial marriage up until he met his white second wife-to-be, Ginni Thomas. This might not be so remarkable by itself; over time, people fall in love, change their minds, become less strident, etc.. However, Thomas has overall maintained his masculinist black nationalist worldview while his wife has increasingly become involved in far-right politics, including associating with white nationalists (NumbersUSA), spreading a deep state-type conspiracy,^[63] and paying for bus transportation to the rally preceding the almost all-white 2021 U.S. coup attempt.^[64]

Clarence has referred to his marriage to Ginni as extremely close politically,^[65] stating in 2011:^[66]

This raises the corruption issue again because Ginni Thomas is now being investigated for her involvement in trying to overturn the 2020 U.S. presidential election by trying to influence then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, indicating QAnon ideology^[67] and using schizofascism.^{[68][note 3]} Clarence Thomas has already refused to recuse himself on a January 6 coup attempt case before the Supreme Court in which he was the sole dissenter, and it seems unlikely that he would do so should a case directly involving his wife come before the court.^[70] Given that Clarence has stated that he has the same ideology as his wife Ginni, it is reasonable to assume that they are both Trumpists.

Ginni Thomas was on Turning Point USA's advisory council as of 2017.^[71] Despite rumors to the contrary, there is no evidence that she paid for >80 TPUSA-sponsored buses to go to Washington for the coup.^[72]

Hypocrisy[edit]

Thomas is a long standing critic of affirmative action, writing that they "may have been motivated, in part, by good intentions cannot provide refuge from the principle that under our Constitution, the government may not make distinctions on the basis of race."^[74] When the Supreme Court ruled race based affirmative actions for university admission unconstitutional in 2023, Thomas was one of the Justices who supported that decision.^[75] However, Thomas was himself had previously benefited from affirmative action policies, only getting into Yale Law School because due to said university attempting to make ten percent of their incoming freshman class students of color that year.^[76] Due to this inconsistency, Thomas was declared the winner of the 1998 Doublespeak Award.^[77]

Originalism[edit]

With regard to the Constitution, Thomas regards himself as a strict adherent to originalism, that the Constitution should not be interpreted through the lens of modern times, but through the Constitution as it was in 1789. This is despite, as Thomas acknowledged, the fact that the Founding Fathers were racists and slaveholders.^[8]:7-8 Thomas ruled that gun laws that prevented domestic abusers with restraining orders from acquiring guns was unconstitutional, because it was passed in the 20th century instead of the 18th century, when beating women was legal. Thomas' record shows, however, that his originalism is episodic and hardly strict.^[8]:151-152

Scott Gerber, in his analysis of Thomas' jurisprudence, basically concluded that Thomas has a double standard:

…Justice Thomas appeals to the ideal of equality at the heart of the Declaration of Independence when he decides questions involving race, but to the Framers’ specific intentions — as manifested in the text and historical context of the Constitution — when he decides questions involving civil liberties and federalism.

…

To make the point more directly, Justice Thomas approaches legal questions pertaining to race differently than he approaches legal questions pertaining to other matters. The irony in this conclusion is difficult to miss. After all, EEOC [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission] Chairman Thomas established his reputation by arguing that Blacks should be treated the same as everyone else.^[78]:193

See also[edit]

• Brett Kavanaugh, similar ideology, similar sexual misconduct controversy, but this time with beer
• Malcolm X — one of Thomas' inspirations^{[8]:2-3,21-38}

External links[edit]

• "Corey Robin: The Enigma of Clarence Thomas", audio discussion by Politics & Prose about Robin's book on Thomas

Notes[edit]

References[edit]