Dear Editor,

The Supreme Court has lost credibility, and rightly so. Unlike elected government officials, the court has no ethics rules. They are considered above the fray, not subject to political influence. It would be good if that were true. Instead, conservatives on the court have manufactured a far-right swing that is far outside the mainstream of public opinion. How did we get here? First came the affront when Mitch McConnell, Senate majority leader at the time, held up Obama’s right to nominate a supreme court justice with 11 months to go before the election, saying “the people should decide.” Later, within weeks of the 2020 election, he rammed through Trump’s nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, when Trump was well behind in the polls. Let the people decide? Only when it suits them. Democracy with a small “d” was the loser.

Then newly appointed justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett all testified that Roe V Wade was settled law, “stare decisis.” They then overturned Roe, taking reproductive decisions away from individuals and sending them back to the states for each to decide. This has led to massive changes, and multiple state bans on abortion after six weeks, an extreme position. Few women would even know they were pregnant by that time. States are competing to have more restrictive abortion regulations, several not permitting exceptions even for rape or incest. Much more extreme than the voting public, where large percentages of the population feel that abortion should be legal with some restrictions. Roe used viability outside the womb as its standard, which in 1963 was about 27 or 28 weeks, the beginning of the 3rd trimester of pregnancy. It was at that time that abortion was permitted, but only for serious health reasons to the fetus or mother. Today, with medical advancements, viability is closer to 22 weeks. But viability was their standard. Now it is a fetal heartbeat or the whim of a very anti-abortion legislature.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court vote last month, or the proposed Iowa state amendment restricting abortion last summer, both countered this trend, as women of all ages voted to keep their rights over their own bodies and those of their children and grandchildren. This extreme position on Roe has caused more erosion of trust in the Court.

Finally, we have Clarence Thomas. Accused of sexual misconduct at his nomination, but “blackwashed” by the Senate, who really wanted a black man to replace the icon Thurgood Marshall, who won the case Brown v. Board of Ed, ending legal segregation in schools, and was a civil rights activist and Supreme Court Justice for nearly 40 years. That Thomas would replace Marshall alone is an affront to anyone who knows anything about black history. Thomas has consistently written opinions insisting that judges should overturn all rules that require transparency. In the famous Citizens United case that opened the floodgates to unlimited dark money in our elections, Thomas wrote, “This court should invalidate mandatory disclosure and reporting requirements.” One would have presumed that Thomas recuse himself in that case, since, according to David Sirota and Julia Rock from the Lever, a progressive blog, Thomas’ own nomination to the court had been boosted by “six figure spending from the Citizens United Foundation- the group that brought the case.”

Other financial improprieties by Thomas have recently been revealed by ProPublica, listing his lavish trips on super yachts and private planes thanks to arch conservative billionaire Harlan Crow, who has his own agenda. Crow bought Thomas’s mother’s home while his mom continues to live there rent free. Is there a hint of impropriety or influence? That used to be the standard.

Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott, and Alex Mierjeski, also of ProPublica, reported that Harlan Crow paid the private school tuition for Thomas’s grandnephew, “to the tune of more than $6,000 a month, ultimately adding up to an amount that may have been more than $150,000. Thomas did not report the payments.”

Emma Brown, Shawn Boburg, and Jonathan O’Connell of the Washington Post broke the story that “right-wing judicial activist Leonard Leo, who as a leader of the Federalist Society that backs originalist judges has been key to transforming the federal judiciary, a decade ago arranged for payments of tens of thousands of dollars to Thomas’s wife Ginni.” Leo and Thomas are supposedly close friends.

The quote continues: “In January 2012, Leo told Kellyanne Conway, who was then a Republican pollster, to bill the Judicial Education Project, a nonprofit organization with which he was associated, and then pass the money on to Ginni Thomas. He told Conway to ‘give’ Thomas ‘another $25K,’ and emphasized that she should include ‘No mention of Ginni, of course,’ in the paperwork. She did so. Later that year, the Judicial Education Project filed a brief before the court in the landmark Shelby County v. Holder case, in which the court, by a vote of 5–4, gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act,” which had been a hard-fought victory where millions had marched for equal voting rights.

The Voting Rights Act had required certain states with a history of racial discrimination in their voting procedures to get “preclearance” for any changes in voting laws. It was a great irritant to white Republican voters. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, just this year, lawmakers in 32 states across the US have introduced or pre-filed at least 150 bills aimed at making it harder to vote, based on accusations of widespread voter fraud that have never been proven. How else could Trump have lost? It had to be fraud. Regrettably, Thomas voted on the side of the Judicial Education Project and was the swing vote. What a loss for small “d” democracy.

What’s more? Ginni Thomas didn’t disclose her income for years, which was at least $120,000 per year and was funded by the Koch-backed Heritage Foundation. More recently, her new startup lobbying group, Liberty Central, received $500,000 from Harlan Crow. Her lobbying group seeks clients who want to influence the outcome of Supreme Court cases. Peddling her influence.

And of course, her role in the January 6 attempt to overthrow the 2020 election was highlighted in the House investigation, where she sent multiple text messages to Mark Meadows, Trump’s spineless Chief of Staff, asking him to do something to stop the election of Joe Biden, despite losing the popular vote by over 7 million and the Electoral College vote by 306 to 232, the same margin as Trump’s victory in 2016.

There is the profound national crisis at the heart of the stories emerging about Thomas. His votes were decisive not only in Shelby County v. Holder, but also in the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, also decided by a vote of 5–4, which allowed unlimited anonymous dark money to flow into political campaigns. Those decisions dramatically undermine our democracy on a daily basis. It now seems highly likely that Clarence Thomas was not ever, and is not now, an impartial jurist, but instead one with a judicial agenda, who has been compromised by the high life he has been shown by his wealthy benefactors. Clarence Thomas has turned toxic, not just to himself, but to the entire Supreme Court and to our democracy. He needs to go.

Bill Thibedeau,

Gilpin County