Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas released a concurring opinion that SCOTUS should reconsider the cases that legalized birth control, sodomy and same-sex marriage
Samuel L. Jackson is weighing in on the fallout around the Supreme Court’s latest ruling.
The Academy Award honoree, 73, called out Justice Clarence Thomas’ after Thomas suggested the court should reconsider other key decisions, including the 2015 case establishing the right to same-sex marriage, following the SCOTUS decision to overturn 1973’s Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to abortion.
“How’s Uncle Clarence feeling about Overturning Loving v Virginia??!!” Jackson wrote Friday on Twitter, referring to the landmark 1967 ruling that found interracial marriage bans unconstitutional. Justice Thomas, 74, a Black man, has been married to wife Virginia Thomas, a white woman, since 1987.
Thomas, who was nominated by President George H. W. Bush as the second Black person to ever serve on the Supreme Court in 1991, wrote in a concurring opinion that SCOTUS should next “reconsider” the rulings that legalized birth control, sodomy and same-sex marriage.
“In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell. Because any substantive due process decision is ‘demonstrably erroneous,’ … we have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents,” he said.
How’s Uncle Clarence feeling about Overturning Loving v Virginia??!!
— Samuel L. Jackson (@SamuelLJackson) June 25, 2022
Jim Obergefell, one of the plaintiffs in the historic Obergefell v. Hodge case that guaranteed the right to marry to same-sex couples, said in a statement sent to PEOPLE that Thomas is “not the Supreme Deity.”
“Clarence Thomas is a Supreme Court justice appointed by humans, he is not the Supreme Deity. The millions of loving couples who have the right to marriage equality to form their own families do not need Clarence Thomas imposing his individual twisted morality upon them. If you want to see an error in judgment, Clarence Thomas, look in the mirror,” he said.
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren also called out Thomas in a tweet on Sunday: “Clarence Thomas made it clear: right-wing extremists aren’t stopping at abortion. They’re coming after marriage equality, contraception, & anyone who doesn’t live & look like their idea of the ideal American. But the Supreme Court won’t get the last word—the American people will.”
Friday’s 6-to-3 ruling reversed nearly 50 years of precedent, giving states the power to pass their own laws around abortion. Since the decision, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri and South Dakota have already banned abortion in their states, after putting “trigger bans” in place that governors enacted after the SCOTUS ruling.
Protests have since erupted around the country, and President Joe Biden has spoken out against the ruling, which he called the “realization of an extreme ideology and a tragic error by the Supreme Court.”
The decision comes after the SCOTUS opinion was leaked to Politico last month. A poll conducted by CNN has since found that 66 percent of Americans did not want Roe v. Wade to be overturned.
[via]
