Tag: Clarence Thomas

Clarence Thomas moves to erode First Amendment in retaliation against tech companies that punished Trump

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Conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas says that judges will soon have “no choice” but to regulate the tech companies that punished former President Donald Trump for inciting a failed insurrection.

Thomas made the remarks in a Monday Supreme Court opinion that vacated a lower court ruling, which had prevented Trump from blocking certain Twitter followers who he did not want to comment on his tweets.

Thomas, who traditionally sides with corporations, suggested that the high court would allow Congress to erode the First Amendment by arguing that tech companies do not have the free speech rights to control their platforms. Continue reading.

Ginni Thomas apologizes to Supreme Court clerks over her support for Trump’s election challenges: report

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Conservative activist Ginni Thomas apologized to her husband’s former Supreme Court clerks for a disagreement among them over her endorsement of a Jan. 6 rally that ended in a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife celebrated fellow supporters of Donald Trump who gathered in Washington, D.C., as Congress certified Joe Biden’s election win, and Ginni Thomas told the justice’s former clerks she was sorry her actions and statements had sparked a dispute among the closely knit group, reported the Washington Post.

“I owe you all an apology,” Ginni Thomas wrote to the private Thomas Clerk World email list. “I have likely imposed on you my lifetime passions. My passions and beliefs are likely shared with the bulk of you, but certainly not all. And sometimes the smallest matters can divide loved ones for too long. Let’s pledge to not let politics divide THIS family, and learn to speak more gently and knowingly across the divide.” Continue reading.

Clarence Thomas pens scathing attack suggesting Supreme Court should overturn same-sex marriage

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Obergefell v. Hodges was the landmark 2015 ruling in which the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states. Two of the dissenters in that ruling were Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito — and now, Thomas and Alito are calling for that decision to be overturned. This comes at a time when there is a very real possibility that Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a far-right social conservative nominated by President Donald Trump, will be replacing the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

In a petition, Thomas and Alito argue that Obergefell was an attack on religious freedom, saying, “The Court has created a problem that only it can fix. Until then, Obergefell will continue to have ‘ruinous consequences for religious liberty.'”

Half a decade ago, the majority in Obergefell v. Hodges came from both the left and the right. Justice Anthony Kennedy, nominated by President Ronald Reagan in 1987, sided with Ginsburg in that decision. Kennedy was fiscally conservative, yet his libertarian streak showed itself when he agreed with Ginsburg on social issues like gay rights, same-sex marriage and abortion. Continue reading.

Speculation swirls about next Supreme Court vacancy

The Hill logoJust months before Election Day, the question of whether President Trumpwill get to select a third Supreme Court justice hangs over the final weeks of the court’s term.

Speculation over a possible vacancy has focused in recent years on the prospect of Justice Clarence Thomas exiting while Republicans control the White House and Senate, and alternatively on the health of the court’s aging liberal bloc.

Top Senate Republicans drew fresh attention to the bench recently when they said they would confirm a new justice if given the chance despite 2020 being an election year, in an apparent reversal of their rationale for blocking President Obama’s nominee late in his second term. Continue reading.

Ginni Thomas leading purge of ‘disloyal’ Trump aides: report

AlterNet logoA group led by Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is driving a White House effort to purge government officials seen as “disloyal” to President Donald Trump and replace them with vocal supporters who regularly appear on Fox News, according to Axios.

Trump recently rehired Johnny McEntee, a 29-year-old personal aide to Trump who was abruptly fired in 2018 amid an investigation over “serious financial crimes,” to lead the presidential personnel office and purge officials believed to be “anti-Trump,” Axios reported last week.

This effort has apparently been in the works since at least 2018, when Thomas’ group Groundswell submitted a number of memos urging the firing of so-called “Never Trump” and “Deep State” officials as aides complained that the government was filled with “snakes,” according to the report. Continue reading.

‘A gross misuse of historical facts’: Scholars tear apart conservative Justice Thomas’s latest anti-abortion screed

In that latest sign that at least that the Supreme Court conservative is eager to start tearing down abortion rights, Justice Clarence Thomas issued a decision this week trying to link the pro-choice movement to eugenics.

He drafted a concurrence in the case of Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, where the Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s fetal remains disposal law and declined to review the state’s law banning abortions on the basis of race, sex, or disability, which the Seventh Circuit had struck down. In the opinion, he argued that there was a strong historical connection between abortion and the eugenics movement. To support this claim, he cited Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger and her defense of eugenic aims.

But scholars are rounding rejecting Thomas’s historical claims and legal arguments.

View the complete May 31 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet website here.

Justice Thomas launches an utterly bizarre attack on birth control

Blessed be the fruit.

The Supreme Court announced on Tuesday that it would not hear a case seeking to reinstate a trolly anti-abortion law targeting sex, race, and disability-selective abortions signed by former Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R).

Justice Clarence Thomas didn’t disagree with the decision not to take up this issue, but he did see it as the perfect opportunity to publish a 20-page rant claiming that the “use of abortion to achieve eugenic goals is not merely hypothetical.”

Such a response is not surprising — Justice Thomas’ has not hid his disdain for Roe v. Wade in his past opinions. What is surprising, however, is that Thomas devotes much of his concurring opinion in Box v. Planned Parenthood to an extended attack on early supporters of birth control. The implication is that contraception, and not just abortion, may need to be banned in order to prevent some kind of racial eugenics.

View the complete May 28 article by Ian Millhiser on the ThinkProgress website here.

Trump Meets With Hard-Right Group Led by Ginni Thomas

Ginni Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, is a prominent hard-right activist.Credit: Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images

Washington, DC — President Trump met last week with a delegation of hard-right activists led by Ginni Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, listening quietly as members of the group denounced transgender people and women serving in the military, according to three people with direct knowledge of the events.

For 60 minutes Mr. Trump sat, saying little but appearing taken aback, the three people said, as the group also accused White House aides of blocking Trump supporters from getting jobs in the administration.

It is unusual for the spouse of a sitting Supreme Court justice to have such a meeting with a president, and some close to Mr. Trump said it was inappropriate for Ms. Thomas to have asked to meet with the head of a different branch of government.

View the complete January 26 article by Maggie Haberman and Annie Karni on The New York Times website here.

Five sitting senators voted on Clarence Thomas’s nomination. Four supported it.

Credit: Philip Bump, The Washington Post

In an essay published by the New York Times, Anita Hill included an interesting aside.

Hill, whose allegations that she had been sexually harassed by Clarence Thomas emerged during the process after his nomination to the Supreme Court, was comparing her situation in 1991 to the current moment. Brett M. Kavanaugh, nominated to the bench by President Trump, has been accused of sexually assaulting Christine Blasey Ford in 1982 while in high school.

“As that same committee, on which sit some of the same members as nearly three decades ago, now moves forward with the Kavanaugh confirmation proceedings,” Hill wrote, “the integrity of the court, the country’s commitment to addressing sexual violence as a matter of public interest, and the lives of the two principal witnesses who will be testifying hang in the balance.”

View the complete September 18 article by Philip Bump on the Washington Post website here.

Echoes of Anita Hill, but in a Different Era for Women

Anita Hill arriving in 1991 in Washington to testify against Clarence Thomas. Credit: Doug Mills, Associated Press

WASHINGTON — She went public just days before a critical vote and took a polygraph test to bolster her credibility. He unequivocally denied her years-old charges of sexual misconduct. Calls mounted to delay the vote and investigate. It was late September, and a Supreme Court seat hung in the balance.

For those of a certain age in Washington, the past few days have felt like an eerie echo of the confirmation battle that consumed the capital in 1991 when Anita F. Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexually harassing her. Now it is Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh who faces a hearing on Monday to address explosive accusations by Christine Blasey Ford that he sexually assaulted her when they were teenagers.

While not a perfect parallel, the case has quickly polarized Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation process, once again drawing in all three branches of government for a showdown over sex, truth and politics. Justice Thomas ultimately prevailed, and has been on the Supreme Court for more than a quarter of a century. But this time the battle takes place in a different era, at a moment when the #MeToo movement has brought down many powerful men over accusations of sexual misconduct that were once swept under the rug.

View the complete September 17 article by Peter Baker and Carl Hulse on the Washington Post website here.