Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has called on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to resign or for the House of Representatives to impeach him.
“Clarence Thomas should resign,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “If not, his failure to disclose income from right-wing organizations, recuse himself from matters involving his wife, and his vote to block the Jan 6th commission from key information must be investigated and could serve as grounds for impeachment.”
Related: Trump met with anti-LGBTQ activists led by a Supreme Court justice’s wife
“Congress must understand that a failure to hold Clarence Thomas accountable sends a loud, dangerous signal to the full Court – Kavanaugh, Barrett, & the rest – that his acts are fair game,” she continued.
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“This is a tipping point. Inaction is a decision to erode and further delegitimize SCOTUS.”
Clarence Thomas should resign.
If not, his failure to disclose income from right-wing organizations, recuse himself from matters involving his wife, and his vote to block the Jan 6th commission from key information must be investigated and could serve as grounds for impeachment.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 29, 2022
Congress must understand that a failure to hold Clarence Thomas accountable sends a loud, dangerous signal to the full Court – Kavanaugh, Barrett, & the rest – that his acts are fair game.
This is a tipping point. Inaction is a decision to erode and further delegitimize SCOTUS.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 29, 2022
Text messages sent by Clarence Thomas’s wife, far-right activist and lawyer Ginni Thomas, came to light last week, showing her repeatedly urging former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to overturn the 2020 presidential election based on the debunked conspiracy theory that President Joe Biden stole the election through secret operations in multiple states.
“Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!” Ginni Thomas wrote in one of the messages. “You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.”
In another, she asked Meadows to “release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down.” She has since insisted she played no role in planning the January 6 Insurrection, but some Democrats have said that her text messages alone amount to an attempt to overthrow the democratically elected government of the United States.
Clarence Thomas was the only Supreme Court justice to dissent from a decision ordering the National Archives to turn over documents to the House’s January 6 Committee, and many are speculating that’s because of his wife’s potential involvement. He has refused to recuse himself from cases involving the insurrection, and for years he has heard cases that involve organizations that Ginni Thomas has worked with.
Throughout his career, Clarence Thomas has voted against LGBTQ people in every equality case that has come to the Supreme Court, including Lawrence v. Texas (which ended sodomy laws in the U.S.), Obergefell v. Hodges (which legalized marriage equality), and Bostock v. Clayton Co. (which found that anti-LGBTQ job discrimination violates federal civil rights law).
He even wrote an opinion in 2020 saying that five years of marriage equality had proved that equal rights for LGBTQ people violate Christians’ religious freedom and that the only solution was to end marriage equality.
During this time, Ginni Thomas was working with far-right organizations and even leading lobby groups into the White House to attack LGBTQ people’s and women’s rights.
