Out Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot summed up what a lot of Americans are thinking about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas after he voted to overturn Roe v. Wade last week and wrote a concurring opinion saying that the rights to contraception, marriage equality, and to not be thrown in jail for being gay should be reconsidered as well.
“F**k Clarence Thomas,” Lightfoot said in video posted to social media by Chicago Tribune reporter Gregory Pratt, who said that the clip is “going viral in rightwing circles.”
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The exchange took place at Chicago’s Pride festivities this weekend, where Lightfoot addressed the crowd and was bringing up Thomas’s concurrence in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization where he brought up Obergefell v. Hodges (which legalized marriage equality in all 50 states) and Lawrence v. Texas (which banned states from throwing people in jail for having gay sex) as cases that could be overturned now that Roe has been overturned.
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“We should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents,” Thomas wrote. “We have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents.”
Lightfoot brought up Thomas’s concurring opinion at the Chicago Pride event and someone in the crowd interrupted her.
“Thank you, f**k Clarence Thomas!” she shouted back. “He thinks that we are going to stand idly by while they take our rights, our right to marry, our right to have children?”
Several people challenging Lightfoot in the upcoming 2023 election criticized her, including former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas who accused her of “inciting people to mob action.”
Not naming anyone specifically, Lightfoot tweeted, “I said what I said” with a picture of her in front of a man with a pink “F**K CLARENCE THOMAS” tank top.
I said what I said. pic.twitter.com/z4BXZ4Jj9Y
— Lori Lightfoot (@LoriLightfoot) June 28, 2022
In a later tweet, Pratt passed along an attendee’s email that said that Lightfoot was reading the man’s pink tank top.
“I just made you famous,” Lightfoot allegedly told the man.
Email and photo: “I just made you famous” pic.twitter.com/FS3rmrCl1o
— Gregory Pratt (@royalpratt) June 28, 2022
