Courts

Judicial Conference Probes Ethical Breaches Of Unnamed Judge... But It's Almost Certainly Clarence Thomas

It's the bare minimum, but after all we've learned about Clarence Thomas in the last year, the bare minimum is noteworthy.

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Justices Thomas And Breyer Testify On US Supreme Court FY2011 Budget

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Clarence Thomas had a wild 2023. ProPublica uncovered evidence that the senior Supreme Court justice took hundreds of thousands in undisclosed gifts. This only opened the floodgates as we learned that Thomas had wealthy buddies cover private school tuition for his family on his behalf, provide his mother rent-free housing, funnel money from a right-wing advocacy group to his wife under the table, and buy him an RV.

But with the Supreme Court thumbing its nose at Congress and sticking with a hollow, unenforceable pinky swear of an ethics code, it seemed unlikely that anything would ever come of the violations.

Though it appears that someone is taking notice…

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Bah gawd, that’s Clarence Thomas’s music!

Obviously the report of the Judicial Conference’s September proceedings — made public following demands from an ethics watchdog — doesn’t name Clarence Thomas. It’s certainly possible that some other federal judge had “errors or omissions” across years of “financial disclosure reports” (plural), but given the known influx of letters written to the Committee about Thomas over this exact time period, it’s hard to read this as anything but an inquiry into the justice’s dealings.

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As the Campaign Legal Center notes, it’s significant that the Conference is doing anything at all:

While this step may not seem like a cause for celebration, the fact that the Judicial Conference even provided such an update in its Report of the Proceedings is highly unusual. The last time the Judicial Conference received letters regarding Justice Thomas’ apparent willful violations of EIGA for failing to disclose private plane travel, back in 2011, the Judicial Conference completely ignored them.

The Judicial Conference had occasion to look into shady Clarence Thomas disclosures before, having let him skate on those 2011 allegations in 2012. Those allegations stemmed from undisclosed income from right-wing organizations to Ginni Thomas. Hard to argue that disclosure breaches aren’t willful when he already got flagged before.

But does it matter in any practical sense? After all, the Judicial Conference can’t impeach a federal judge or anything.

While that’s a fair concern, the Conference can refer violations of federal disclosure law to the Department of Justice for further investigation. While the Chief Justice claims the other branches have no authority over the courts, every justice files — to varying degrees of completeness — the government employee financial disclosures in question, conceding the obligation to follow that law.

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Alas, we may be getting ahead of ourselves. The Judicial Conference might be looking at these allegations but that doesn’t mean they’ll issue the referral or that Merrick Garland would act on such a referral and seek some sort of fine. And even if the DOJ took action, there’s no guarantee that the Supreme Court would choose to respect that outcome. There’s a whole lot of distance between this aside in a Conference report and any real accountability.

Perhaps it’s disheartening to celebrate the judiciary taking the most basic first step on ethics… but here we are.

Judicial Conference Indicates Ethics Review of Justice Thomas [Campaign Legal Center]

Earlier: Paragon Of Virtue Clarence Thomas Has Been Given Half Million In Value Off The Record And It Totally Hasn’t Impacted His Judging. Not One Bit. Nope.
That Perfectly Innocent Way One Funnels Money To The Spouse Of A Supreme Court Justice While Trying To Avoid A Paper Trail
It’s Going To Be A Lot Harder For Clarence Thomas To Justify The Most Recent Ethics Scandal
Appearance Of Bribery: Political Megadonor Wants Us To Believe He Bought And Improved Justice’s Mom’s House Off The Record Because Of History Or Something
Clarence Thomas Skated On Ethics Complaints In 2012… Meaning He Definitely Already Knew The Rules

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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