Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas told his law clerks in the early 90s that he wanted to serve four decades on the court to make the lives of liberals ‘miserable’.
Thomas was accused of sexual harassment by Anita Hill during his confirmation hearing in 1991. Hill testified that Thomas made repeated, unwanted sexual advances when the two worked together.
Thomas was ultimately confirmed in a 52-48 vote, but he hated how he was treated by the media during his confirmation and vowed to take revenge.
Two years after he was confirmed, one of his law clerks told the New York Times that Justice Thomas plans to remain on the court for at least four decades to punish liberals for making his life miserable .
“The liberals made my life miserable for 43 years. And I’m going to make their lives miserable for 43 years,” a former clerk remembered Thomas saying at the time.
Thomas joined four of his fellow conservative justices on the court Friday to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that legalized abortion nationwide.
In a concurring opinion Thomas called on the court to “reconsider” other rulings similarly protected under privacy rights. Those include rulings that supports access to contraception, same-sex relationships, and same-sex marriage.
“For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell,” Thomas wrote. “Because any substantive due process decision is ‘demonstrably erroneous’ … we have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents … After overruling these demonstrably erroneous decisions, the question would remain whether other constitutional provisions guarantee the myriad rights that our substantive due process cases have generated.”
