The Dangers of Clarence Thomas

Wake up.

Clarence Thomas Wants to End Marriage Equality. He Has Two Different Strategies to Do It.

But then—in a separate opinion three days later that received far less attention—he laid out an alternate route to gut same-sex marriage and other personal freedoms: allowing government officials to simply refuse to recognize Americans’ constitutional rights if they claim those rights conflict with their own religious values.

Opinion | The Supreme Court Wants to End the Separation of Church and State

Especially alarming, though, is Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion in Kennedy. Under the free speech clause, he noted, the Court has held that “the first Amendment protects public employee speech only when it falls within the core of First Amendment protection —speech on matters of public concern.” Other types of on-the-job speech can be restrained. But Thomas added: “It remains an open question . . . if a similar analysis can or should apply to free-exercise claims in light of the ‘history’ and ‘tradition’ of the free exercise clause.” (Emphasis supplied.) In other words, although free speech in government employment is limited, U.S. history and tradition may signal a different outcome for religion in government.

After Dobbs, history and tradition at the time of the framing of the Constitution are now the linchpin of constitutional interpretation. And Thomas has explicitly connected the founding period — and national identity — with Christianity. In September 2021, he delivered a lecture about his Catholicism at the Notre Dame School of Law, linking Christianity and the founding.... 

Supreme Court Could Do Even More Damage 

Think there’s no way they could do even more damage? Think again. The Court is prepared to hear Moore v. Harper later this year, an important case that could upend how elections are conducted across the country. It’s the culmination of a 10-year effort by conservative lawmakers across the country to delegitimize the courts and erode the power of other branches of government.  Through this case, they hope to make it easier to gerrymander, suppress the vote and challenge election results.    

The centerpiece of the case is a fringe legal theory called the “independent state legislature theory” which first surfaced in 2000 during the Bush v. Gore litigation. Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote a concurring opinion in that case promoting a theory that relies on an extremely narrow interpretation of the term “state legislature” in the Elections Clause and the Presidential Electors Clause of the U.S. constitution. Traditionally, courts have interpreted the term broadly and have said it includes not only the legislative body of a state government but the governor and courts as well.

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More recently, President Donald Trump and his allies tried to use the theory to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Although most of the court declined to embrace it, three members – Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch – endorsed it.

It used to be the conservatives decried the Supreme Court's power. Hypocrisy does bot bother those whose sole purpose is power. They decried when worried about the loss of their power and advocate when it gives them power. Time to stand up for democracy or go down to a very ugly place for America.

sch 8/27/22