Thomas: Draft leak has changed Supreme Court
WASHINGTON — Justice Clarence Thomas says the Supreme Court has been changed by the shocking leak of a draft opinion this month. The opinion suggests the court is poised to overturn the right to an abortion recognized nearly 50 years ago in Roe v. Wade.
The conservative Thomas, who joined the court in 1991 and has long called for Roe v. Wade to be overturned, described the leak as an unthinkable breach of trust.
“When you lose that trust, especially in the institution that I’m in, it changes the institution fundamentally. You begin to look over your shoulder. It’s like kind of an infidelity that you can explain it, but you can’t undo it,” he said Friday evening in Dallas.
Thomas said that previously, “if someone said that one line of one opinion” would be leaked, the response would have been: “Oh, that’s impossible. No one would ever do that.”
“Now that trust or that belief is gone forever,” Thomas said at the Old Parkland Conference, which describes itself as a conference “to discuss alternative proven approaches to tackling the challenges facing Black Americans today.”
Thomas also touched on protests by liberals at conservative justices’ homes. Thomas argued conservatives have never acted that way.
“You would never visit Supreme Court justices’ houses when things didn’t go our way. We didn’t throw temper tantrums,” he said.