Clarence Thomas speech draws new criticism

Liberals renewed their criticism of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas Monday in response to a speech Thomas gave over the weekend in which he said he and his tea party activist wife Virginia “believe in the same things” and dismissed their critics as “bent on undermining” the court.

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) said it was Thomas’s speech that “undermines confidence in our highest court.”

Bob Edgar, a former Democratic congressman and president of the left-leaning watchdog group Common Cause, said the speech did little to assuage concerns his group has raised about Thomas’s impartiality and said that his group’s “asking for more accountability and transparency from the nation’s highest court doesn’t undermine it.”

The group has also raised questions about another conservative justice, Antonin Scalia.

Thomas made the speech Saturday night in Charlottesville, Va., at a banquet sponsored by the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group that paid to fly Scalia and Thomas in January of 2007 and 2008, respectively, to California, where they attended events connected to major conservative donor conferences organized by the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers, David and Charles.

“It’s past time for Justices Thomas and Scalia to provide all the details of their participation – apparently on the Federalist Society’s dime – at Koch-sponsored political strategy and fundraising meetings,” Edgar said in a statement. “Nothing less than the court’s reputation as an impartial tribunal is on the line.”

Common Cause suggested in a January letter to the Justice Department that Thomas’s connection to the Koch event, as well as his wife’s leadership of a tea party group, may have been grounds for him to recuse himself from the Supreme Court’s ruling last year in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, the court’s decision striking down decades-old restrictions on political spending.

Common Cause on Monday demanded more information from Scalia, Thomas and the Federalist Society about how much the justices participated in the Koch conferences, which are designed to raise money for political activities. The Federalist Society, which declined to comment on the letter, has said that it flew Thomas and Scalia to California primarily to participate in its own events, which coincided with the Koch events.

“We knew the justices were going to be out there,” and the attendees would be interested in hearing what they had to say, Eugene Meyer, the society’s executive director, told the Washington Post last week.

On Tuesday, Weiner plans to join Rep. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Common Cause and the liberal group Alliance for Justice at a Capitol Hill press conference to unveil a bill that would extend a judicial code of conduct to the Supreme Court and require the justices to explain why they did – or did not – recuse themselves from cases.

Unlike lower federal courts, where justices are subject to strict rules setting recusal guidelines, the Supreme Court is mostly self-regulating. Justices decide whether or not their personal affiliations warrant them stepping aside – or recusing themselves – from deliberations on a case.

Weiner said there’s always been a presumption “that the Supreme Court is sensitive to the appearance of its own biases, and that appearance seems to be no deterrent nowadays. It seems like it’s gotten worse and worse through time where people like Scalia and Thomas seem to be thumbing their nose at the appearance because they know that they’re beyond the reach of any authority.”

Weiner had collected the signatures of 90 House Democrats on a letter urging Thomas to recuse himself from any case involving last year’s healthcare overhaul because of his wife’s past leadership of a tea party group called Liberty Central that campaigned against the overhaul and her current position as head of a lobbying firm called Liberty Consulting.

There’s no evidence that Liberty Consulting has worked on healthcare related issues. Neither Virginia Thomas nor the firm has registered to lobby Congress, and Liberty Consulting took down its website after POLITICO revealed the creation of the firm and its appeals for meetings with freshmen Republican lawmakers.

But Weiner said the speech “only confirms the need for Justice Thomas to recuse himself. By declaring his support and shared views of his spouse, he adds to the perception that his mind is made up.” And he said if the court overturns the overhaul and Thomas does not recuse himself from the decision, “I will be making that point that this is not a credible decision.”

In the speech, Justice Thomas referred to the criticism leveled of him and his wife after she started Liberty Central in late 2009.

“I watched my bride … when she started her organization to give 24/7 every day in defense of liberty,” he said, later adding “there is a price to pay today for standing in defense of your Constitution.

Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund suggested Monday that liberal criticism of Thomas may be motivated by something other than concerns about judicial integrity.

“It’s impossible to figure out all of the motivations behind the attacks on Justice Thomas,” Fund wrote, “but it’s a safe bet that several liberal groups have decided that the constitutionality of ObamaCare is under serious assault. They want to lay down some markers for declaring that any adverse decision by the Supreme Court is morally — and legally — illegitimate.”

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