Know Your SCOTUS: Justice Clarence Thomas Is a Threat to Women and Democracy
The truth is a damning indictment of a petty, merciless idealogue with an ax to grind against the liberals who "shamed" him.
While we were watching in abject horror this week as Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito handed down the Court’s decision on abortion—while we wept in frustration and rage, hugged each other, and spent hours on the phone commiserating—there was one Supreme Court Justice that rejoiced. Not just because of the Court ruling, but because at long last he was able to stick it to the liberals, women in particular, that he makes no bones about hating.
We know this is true for several reasons: 1) a former law clerk of Clarence Thomas said Thomas has long held a grudge against liberals stemming from the “ill treatment” he received at his contentious confirmation hearings in 1991—hearings wherein he was credibly accused of sexual harassment. "The liberals made my life miserable for 43 years ... and I'm going to make their lives miserable," he purportedly told the law clerk, 2) formerly gregarious on the Washington social scene (according to friends), Thomas became reclusive and still eschews most parties, 3) speaking on condition of anonymity, several former Supreme Court clerks who worked for other justices claim that Thomas invited them to lunch and then proceeded to openly solicit their sympathy regarding the “abuse” he suffered at his Senate hearing.
Per The New York Times, one of the clerks present at that lunch said, “He clearly wanted to talk about what happened. He wants some kind of vindication. He really wants people to agree with him that something outrageous happened."
Conservative activist Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, Justice Thomas’s wife, confided in the November 11, 1991 issue of People magazine that she believed her husband’s sexual harassment accuser Anita Hill had been in love with him. According to Ginni, she and Thomas got through the ordeal of his confirmation hearings by “holding hands, praying with friends, and listening for hours to prayer music.” But then—shockingly—in 2010, twenty years after the hearing, Ginni Thomas called Anita Hill and left a voicemail demanding that she apologize for accusing her husband of sexual harassment.
According to Anita Hill, a well-respected lawyer and professor of social policy, law, and women’s studies at Brandeis University, “It [Ginni Thomas’s call] came in at 7:30 a.m. on my office phone from somebody I didn't know, and she is asking for an apology. It was not invited. There was no background for it … I appreciate that no offense was intended, but she can't ask for an apology without suggesting that I did something wrong, and that is offensive.”
All these years later, Clarence Thomas and his wife are clearly aggrieved, resentful, and thirsty for revenge.
“Clarence will give everyone a fair day in court," Ginni Thomas said in her People magazine interview. "But I feel he doesn't owe any of the groups who opposed him anything."
But Anita Hill was, and remains, a credible witness, one who never sought publicity for herself. As part of a routine background check on then-candidate Thomas, the FBI conducted a private interview with his legal assistant Anita Hill, which was leaked to the press. Against her wishes, Hill was called to publicly testify.
On October 11, 1991, in a circus-atmosphere televised hearing, Hill stated that Thomas had asked her out many times during her two years of employment with him. Despite her repeated refusals, he “spoke about … such matters as women having sex with animals and films showing group sex or rape scenes.” Thomas graphically described “his own sexual prowess” and bragged about the size of his penis. In what was to become the most memorable event of Hill’s testimony, she recounted an instance in which Thomas eyed a can of Coke on his desk and asked, “Who has put pubic hair on my Coke?”
Four female witnesses were slated to support Hill’s testimony. In a private, “compromise” deal between Republicans and the Senate Judiciary Committee chair, those witnesses were never called.
The Senate Judiciary Committee chair was none other than Joe Biden.
Unlike Thomas, Hill took a polygraph test. When she passed it, senators decided that since polygraph results were inadmissible in court, they were inadmissible at a hearing. Here’s why that’s problematic. The Department of Defense has conducted well over 500,000 polygraph examinations to resolve issues arising in counterintelligence, security, and criminal investigations. Thomas’s refusal to take a polygraph test (an eerie precursor to SCOTUS Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing where Palo Alto psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford passed a polygraph test after accusing Kavanaugh of attempted rape; similarly, Kavanaugh refused to submit to one.) sure doesn’t make him look innocent. Senators confirmed Thomas to the Supreme Court by a vote of 52-48, one of the narrowest margins in U.S. history.
But when it comes to sexual harassment, Anita Hill is hardly an outlier. In 2016, lawyer Moira Smith claimed that Thomas groped her at a dinner party when she was a Truman Foundation scholar in 1999. With his usual bluster, Thomas called her accusation “preposterous,” but what else is an obvious misogynist going to say?
Equally damning: between 2003 and 2007, Thomas failed to report his wife’s income from conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation—almost $700,000. Instead of checking the box labeled “none” where “spousal noninvestment income” would be noted, Thomas conveniently forgot, at least until watchdog group Common Cause called him out. Then he amended twenty years’ worth of his financial disclosures.
More recently, Ginni Thomas has landed herself in considerable hot water when she emailed 29 Arizona GOP lawmakers, urging them to overturn the 2020 election. Trump Chief-of-Staff Mark Meadows was also the luckless recipient of Ginni’s unhinged conspiracy theories about election fraud, pleading with him to overthrow the results election that swept Joe Biden to victory. Her close affiliation with known rightwing conspiracy monger and former Trump campaign advisor Steve Bannon has no doubt contributed to Ginni’s more radical viewpoints. She is also a member of ultra-rightwing Facebook political group “Frontliners for Liberty.” The group's front page carries a banner that states, "The enemy of America...is the radical fascist left."
To be clear, Justice Thomas will never step down from his position. Nor will he recuse himself from cases having to do with “liberal causes” in general or the January 6 riots specifically. We will never get the 2/3rds majority necessary to remove him from office. The Constitution states that Justices "shall hold their Offices during good Behavior." This means that the Justices hold office as long as they choose to and can only be removed from office by impeachment. The only Justice to be impeached was Associate Justice Samuel Chase in 1805. The House of Representatives passed Articles of Impeachment against him; he was, however, acquitted by the Senate.
Democracy is messy. It’s disappointing and messy. But what are the alternatives?
Until he dies or retires, Justice Thomas is going to be handing down decisions like the one for Roe v. Wade, effectively ruling the country by judicial fiat. We need to fully understand that. Conservatives know they no longer have the majority in the country; packing the Supreme Court with six extremely religious (many are members of charismatic Catholic sects) justices is the only way they’re going to continue to lie, steal, cheat, and gerrymander their way to victory.
We’re not going to regain lost ground through the judiciary. We’re only going to regain it through the legislative branch (the House and the Senate) and by voting for lawmakers whose support for a woman’s right to choose will compel them to lift the filibuster. Biden has made it clear he will sign any federal mandate that protects a woman’s right to reproductive healthcare.
If he fails us—if any of them fail us—then we will have no choice but to adopt more extreme measures.
Please weigh in here. We need to dialogue about a man who clearly poses a significant threat to women and democracy. Leave your comments below.
Copyright © 2022 Stacey Eskelin
It truly is an abomination how their thinly veiled interpretations of the laws can be so malleable in order to give a middle finger to the majority of Americans. There aren’t enough guard rails for this highway to hell. The destruction of this egregious ruling will have dire consequences for millions of people, just like citizens united. Facts be damned! The chamber of horrors has become a water carrier for the fundamentalist right wing as a their bully pulpit, spewing tainted ideology straight from the river Styx. Supreme Christian Orthodoxy Thrust Upon Society!
For generations, the Supreme Court has held itself up as the impartial final arbiters of justice in America. In reality, it's been as corrupt and partisan as the day is long. Making matters worse is that a seat on the Court is a lifetime sinecure and removal is virtually impossible. Clarence Thomas cases could hear cases naked and it would still be difficult to remove him.
Ginni Thomas should be behind bars and her husband may well be open to one or more RICO indictments, if Merrick Garland would simply do his damned job.
Impartial justice? Not as long as the Supreme Court is constituted in the manner it is. Change is sorely needed, but change is exactly what we won't get.