Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas apparently isn't thinking about retirement any time soon.
While speaking to the media Friday, Thomas, 73, jokingly put down a challenge for the American press, after a recent leak from Justice Samuel Alito's initial majority draft opinion for a case that could potentially lead to the Supreme Court striking down the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling, which made abortion legal in the United States (circa 1973).
"One of the things I say in response to the media ... especially early on, about the way I did my job, I said, 'I will absolutely leave the court when I do my job as poorly as you do yours' — and that was meant as a compliment, really," said Thomas after a conference in Dallas, Texas.
The Alito leak, which occurred through a May 2 published piece in Politico, could damage the public "trust" in the Supreme Court, Thomas said.
"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," says Thomas, who was nominated in 1991 under former President George H.W. Bush.
Thomas, the second black Justice in Supreme Court history, was also astonished to learn the leak involved an initial draft opinion, let alone a document which covered more than 100 pages.
In addition to Alito and Thomas, Politico reported that conservative justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett sided with the majority, at least in the initial draft, as a means of potentially overruling the Roe v. Wade and 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey cases, with the latter affirming Roe's finding of a constitutional right to abortion.
In previous years, "If someone said that one line of one opinion" would be leaked, Thomas speculated 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 addressed alternative "approaches to tackling the challenges facing Black Americans today."
Thomas' Friday statement runs similar to what was said as a guest lecturer at the University of Notre Dame last year, chiding the media for eroding "faith" in legal institutions.
"I think the media makes it sound as though you are just always going right to your personal preference. So if they think you are anti-abortion or something personally, they think that's the way you always will come out. They think you’re for this or for that. They think you become like a politician," Thomas reportedly said back then.
"That's a problem. You're going to jeopardize any faith in the legal institutions."
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