Justice Clarence Thomas faces yet another call to recuse himself, following reporting that his wife, Ginni Thomas, praised a conservative religious group’s opposition to Supreme Court reform. Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin, D-Ill., called on the justice to recuse himself from cases involving that group, the First Liberty Institute.
ProPublica reported that Ginni wrote in an email to the group, “YOU GUYS HAVE FILLED THE SAILS OF MANY JUDGES. CAN I JUST TELL YOU, THANK YOU SO, SO, SO MUCH.”
Of course, calls to reform the court — some of which have been endorsed by President Joe Biden recently — have gained traction due in part to Thomas’ ethics scandals.
The justice rejected calls to step aside in other cases this past term, including ones related to the Jan. 6 insurrection, despite Ginni’s backing of Donald Trump’s effort to subvert the 2020 presidential election. So there’s little reason to expect Durbin’s latest call to sway Thomas this time around. Durbin didn’t cite any specific First Liberty Institute cases in his announcement, though the Supreme Court adds cases to its docket on a rolling basis.
Notably, however, Thomas did recuse from a case last year, specifically a Jan. 6–related petition from MAGA lawyer John Eastman. The justice didn’t explain why he recused from that case but not others, so we can’t compare any public rationale against his non-recusals in other cases that could raise just as many questions about his impartiality as Eastman’s case did. If nothing else, Durbin’s call is a reminder of the ethical issues that the high court still faces — many of which are prompted by Thomas himself — as the new court term starts up next month. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for updates and expert analysis on the top legal stories. The newsletter will return to its regular weekly schedule when the Supreme Court’s next term kicks off in October.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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