Though impeachment is the only way to expel a Supreme Court justice, the likelihood of that happening to the disgraced Clarence Thomas is very slim. In April, it was revealed by ProPublica that Thomas received luxury gifts and trips from Republican donor Harlan Crow. This sparked outrage, with many politicians demanding that he be impeached. Thomas has served on the U.S. Supreme Court since 1991.
Thomas insisted that he simply benefitted from Crow’s “personal hospitality” and Crow doubled down on never seeking “to influence Justice Thomas on any legal or political issue.” However, the obvious conflict of interest was deeply troubling. Calls for impeachment were renewed after the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in universities and colleges as well as Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan.
“It is the House’s responsibility to pursue that investigation in the form of impeachment,” Democratic U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told CNN in an interview after the Crow scandal broke. However, Ocasio-Cortez knows that this is probably won’t happen since the House of Representatives has a Republican majority and want to preserve as many conservative justices as they can.
In addition, political standards for impeachment make it extremely difficult for it to take place. Thomas’ wife, Ginni, was directly involved in attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in favor of Donald Trump. However, Thomas refused to recuse himself from a number of cases pertaining to election results—and was able to get away with it.
The Director of the Law and Public Policy Minor at Northeastern University Dan Urman said that Thomas’ behavior is “terrible for the court’s image” but knows “it’s unlikely anything will come of it.” He continued: “My view is that almost nothing will get a justice removed.
“If Democrats take over the house in 2024, they could possibly hold impeachment hearings; but there is no way that 67 senators will vote to remove Thomas. By then, this will feel like old news. Think about how quickly the calls to impeach [Justice Brett] Kavanaugh died down in 2019.”
In the history of the United States, only 15 federal judges have ever been impeached, resulting in eight being expelled from their positions. However, no Supreme Court justices have ever been removed in lieu of two impeachment attempts—with only one of those being followed by a Senate trial.