Clarence thomas why is he famous

The case came before the Supreme Court of the United States after the Kansas Supreme Court overturned a sentence by a lower state court that found that the equal balance of mitigating factors and aggravating factors should result in the death penalty, which was in accordance with Kansas law. Justice Thomas and the majority agreed with the lower court that the sentencing was carried out in accordance with the Kansas Constitution.

He wrote:. Consistent with the laws of New York , Milford Central School authorized district residents to use its facilities for after-school activities under its community use policy. Two district residents, Stephen and Darleen Fournier, sought approval to use school facilities for a children's Christian organization called the Good News Club. The school denied the Fourniers' request. The school claimed that the organization's proposed activities, which included prayer, Bible study, and singing songs, constituted a practice of religious worship in violation of the school's community use policy.

The club filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging that the denial of the club's application violated its rights of free speech under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. A federal district court awarded summary judgment Refers to a judgment granted on a claim about which there is no genuine issue of fact and to which the party moving for judgment prevails as a matter of law. Writing for a six-justice majority, Justice Clarence Thomas reversed The action of an appellate court overturning a lower court's decision.

In his opinion for the court, Justice Thomas held that "when Milford denied the Good News Club access to the school's limited public forum on the ground that the Club was religious in nature, it discriminated against the Club because of its religious viewpoint in violation of the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. Justice Thomas was a dissenting writer in the case of Stenberg v. Carhart, a case that involved a Nebraska law that banned partial birth abortions. The Supreme Court of the United States majority ruled that the Nebraska law was unconstitutional in placing an undue burden upon a woman's right to an abortion.

Thomas' dissenting opinion argued that while the Constitution defined the right to an abortion, it did not define how a state must regulate those abortions. In the conclusion of his dissent, he wrote:. Hill was called to testify at Thomas' confirmation hearings, where she alleged that Thomas had subjected her to inappropriate harassing comments of a sexual nature. The link below is to the most recent stories in a Google news search for the terms Clarence Thomas Supreme Court.

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What's on your ballot? Jump to: navigation , search. Marsh , U. And those precedents do not empower this Court to chip away at the States' prerogative to do so on the grounds the dissent invokes today. Milford Central School , U. Nebraska law prohibiting partial-birth abortions held unconstitutional See also: United States Supreme Court Stenberg v.

Carhart , U. Under Casey , the regulation before us today should easily pass constitutional muster. But the Court's abortion jurisprudence is a particularly virulent strain of constitutional exegesis. And so today we are told that 30 States are prohibited from banning one rarely used form of abortion that they believe to border on infanticide.

It is clear that the Constitution does not compel this result. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source. Supreme Court, "Stokeling v. After several hours of warm conversation, Thomas asked Jennings what his plans were for college. Thomas frowned. By his own admission, he is not one of them. At the time, Thomas dodged the question, but he has since given his answer on the Court.

In the case Missouri v. Thomas joined the majority. All my classmates and I wanted was the choice to attend a mostly black or a mostly white school, and to have the same resources in whatever school we chose. His concurrence in Missouri v. Perhaps the most insidious of those experiments, for Thomas, is affirmative action, which he has long opposed. His critics call him a hypocrite. His defenders believe that Thomas is advancing a common conservative line—that affirmative action is a form of reverse racism, which imposes illegitimate burdens on whites.

According to Thomas, affirmative action is the most recent attempt by white people to brand and belittle black people as inferior. Affirmative action does not formally mirror the tools of white supremacy; for Thomas, it is the literal continuation of white supremacy. His argument is rooted in two beliefs, each informed by his time spent on the left. The first is that affirmative action reinforces the stigma that shadows African-Americans.

Among many whites, blackness signals a deficit of intellect, talent, and skill. In the same way that enslavement marked all black people, free or slave, as inferior, affirmative action—here Thomas borrows directly from the language of Plessy v. The second way affirmative action continues white supremacy is by elevating whites to the status of benefactors, doling out scarce privileges to those black people they deem worthy. Put simply, Thomas believes that affirmative action is a white program for white people.

We see this argument in Grutter v. Bollinger, a affirmative-action case concerning the University of Michigan Law School. In the early nineteen-nineties, the school adopted an affirmative-action policy in order to create a more diverse student body.

Barbara Grutter, a white applicant who was denied admission, alleged that she was a victim of racial discrimination and that the policy violated the Fourteenth Amendment. Thomas also dissented in Grutter. The simplest, most effective way for the Law School to diversify itself would be to become less selective.

It could accept anyone who completed a certified program. Thomas does not believe this to be a constitutional value, much less one the Court should honor. Bakke, which declared the policy constitutional—is that diversity has an educational benefit: students will be exposed to different views and voices, which will challenge their beliefs. It marks black people as victims and whites as saviors.

The two men could not have been more different. Marshall was widely known as a liberal jurist and for his civil rights work before taking the bench. Critics, on the other hand, attacked Thomas for his rigidly conservative views. Some also thought that he had too little experience as a judge. During his confirmation hearings, Thomas remained quiet on several key issues, including abortion rights.

One of the most infamous moments in Thomas's career, which almost cost him his post, was when one of his former aides at the EEOC, Anita Hill, came forward and testified that he had sexually harassed her during the time the two worked together. She claimed that he had asked her to go out with him, discussed pornography and made inappropriate remarks about her body.

Thomas patently denied the allegations, famously referring to the resulting hearings as, "a high-tech lynching for uppity Blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves. While the nation watched Hill's testimony with great interest, the committee decided that there was not enough evidence to prove her claims.

Thomas was approved by the Senate by a very small margin, a vote. Since his appointment in , Thomas has often sided with his fellow conservatives on the court, especially Justice Antonin Scalia. He has opposed decisions in favor of affirmative action, such as the ruling that continued the program at the University of Michigan's law school. While he usually declines interviews, Thomas, based on his opinions and speeches, also clearly supports the idea of a limited federal government.

He finally decided to disclose information about his life in his memoir My Grandfather's Son. True to his conservative leanings, Thomas dissented in the Supreme Court's landmark decisions in June to uphold the federal tax subsidies of the Affordable Care Act also known as Obamacare and the constitutional rights of gay couples to get married.

However, he did side with the liberal justices that month in a ruling that declared the state of Texas could reject a specialty license plate featuring an image of the Confederate flag.

By all accounts, including his own, the experience nearly destroyed him—not to mention what it did to Anita Hill, who accused him of sexual harassment. Yet such are the contradictions of Clarence Thomas. He is a baffling figure. He disfavors integration and even seems to resist desegregation. A former black activist and onetime follower of Malcolm X, he champions a criminal-justice system suffused with racism, and has rejected claims of cruel and unusual punishment made by prisoners.

He rejects laws and programs designed to help black people, because he views white paternalism and its attendant stigma as the greatest impediment to black advancement. Something of value? For instance, in the case Virginia v. Many of his judicial opinions turn on the assertion that his methodology would produce better results for black people than the prevailing liberal orthodoxy.

Still, Robin is not hurling insults. He is deconstructing a sphinx, and his point carries the uncomfortable ring of truth. If Thomas wants to take America back to its founding, that project entails reconciling slavery and the law. Perhaps this simply cannot be done. For his part, Thomas has not tried, interpreting the post—Civil War amendments far more narrowly than other justices.