((UPDATED)) not The Onion: Clarence Thomas rebukes "Brown vs The Board of Education" -- I... I can't even...

[Bucky]

Update with better context than Axios provides:

from Slate
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/05/supreme-court-south-carolina-redistricting-ruling-clarence-thomas-brown-v-board.html

The Supreme Court’s 6–3 decision on Thursday in Alexander v. South Carolina NAACP is a devastating blow to the fight against racial gerrymandering. Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion for the conservative supermajority guts a series of precedents that guarded against racist redistricting, granting state legislatures sweeping new authority to sort their residents between districts on the basis of skin color.

And yet, as bad as Alito’s opinion was, it didn’t go far enough for Justice Clarence Thomas, who penned a solo concurrence demanding a radical move: The Supreme Court, he argued, should overrule every precedent that limits gerrymandering—including the landmark cases establishing “one person, one vote”—because it has no constitutional power to redraw maps in the first place. And he places much of the blame for the court’s allegedly illegitimate intrusion into redistricting on a surprising culprit: Brown v. Board of Education.

Brown was, of course, the 1954 decision holding that racial segregation in public education violates the equal protection clause. Many of us celebrated its 70th anniversary just last week. But Brown has always had its detractors, and Thomas has long been one of them. He has written that the decision rested on a “great flaw” by focusing on the stigma that Jim Crow inflicted on schoolchildren. He rejected Brown’s assertion that Black children suffered constitutional harm when denied access to integrated education. And he condemned the court’s ongoing efforts to remedy decades of segregation by integrating public school systems by judicial decree, decrying these integration efforts as “predicated on black inferiority.”

Thomas’ latest critique of Brown springs from a similar frustration with the Supreme Court for allegedly overstepping its constitutional role to police racial discrimination. The case at hand, Alexander, involves a South Carolina congressional district that was becoming competitive for Democrats. After the 2020 census, the GOP-controlled Legislature moved thousands of Black voters out of this district, and brought thousands of white voters into it. This population-shuffling shored up the district’s Republican lean, meeting the Legislature’s goal. Voting rights advocates sued, arguing that the redistribution of residents on the basis of race violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. A federal district court agreed and found the map unconstitutional.

The original link

https://www.axios.com/2024/05/23/clarence-thomas-supreme-court-racial-segregation

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas issued a strong rebuke of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling on Thursday, suggesting the court overreached its authority in the landmark decision that banned separating schoolchildren by race.

Why it matters: Thomas attacked the Brown decision in a concurrence opinion that allowed South Carolina to keep using a congressional map that critics say discriminated against Black voters.

Driving the news: The court "took a boundless view of equitable remedies" in the Brown ruling, wrote Thomas, who in 1991 replaced Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall — the first Black Supreme Court Justice and the lead lawyer in the Brown case.

Those remedies came through "extravagant uses of judicial power" to end racial segregation in the 1950s and 60s, Thomas wrote.

Federal courts have limited power to grant equitable relief, "not the flexible power to invent whatever new remedies may seem useful at the time," he said, justifying his opinion to keep a predominantly white congressional district in South Carolina.

Zoom out: The U.S. marked the 70th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling last week.

The 9-0 decision declared the "separate but equal" doctrine unconstitutional and helped usher in the Civil Rights Movement, though it took two decades to dismantle some school segregation policies.

[no_hypocrisy]

1. And Thomas wouldn't be sitting on The Bench were it not for B v Bd of Ed

[B.See]

22. Exactly.

[elleng]

29. which is the reason, imo, he's had a stick up his a** for all these years.

He is a truly miserable person, and has been so for most of his life.

[highplainsdem]

2. Clarence Thomas proving once again that he can keep getting more and more disgusting...

[erronis]

12. It's OK. When slavery is once again the rule of the land, Thomas will be made Trusty.

As long as he still answers Yessa to Leo and Crow and Putin.

[Johonny]

3. They're heading for a pro slavery platform

It is just a matter of time.

[flying_wahini]

4. And at the bottom of this barrel is the Dept Of Education that the GOP wants to abolish.

The only people getting an education will be the ones willing to pay big bucks and then, only “their kids”.

Abbott recently lost the (Tax dollars to Private schools) vouchers that he has been pushing for years.
Never think this is going away. It won’t. Ken Paxton (Tx AG) is so far up Trumps ass that he has made some noise about it too.

[MutantAndProud]

5. Instead of a generic pulling up of the ladder

Where it can technically be brought back down with clever maneuvering and teamwork, this move makes it disappear entirely up his robes like a rabbit into a magician’s hat

[JoseBalow]

11. "Magic" is all illusion

Look for the ladder up his ass

[erronis]

13. But Thomas is different! He succeeded without even trying. He's the new Black BeJeezus.

And no one else should ever be able to take over his exalted position.

[Bucky]

6. His complaint that racial adjudication is "predicated on black inferiority" nicely ignores histories of racial bias

He's cherry picking in about the dumbest ways possible.

[Volaris]

19. That jumped out at me, too...

It's not predicated on black inferiority, it's predicted on white supremacy, you worth..

mmmm the rest will get me another complaint lol.
I have a solution: draw districts by county line maps, alternate the number of reps each has post-census, triple the size of the house and run congress in 8 hour shifts, 24 hours a day.

Oh, everybody LEFT your shit red counties cause they're run by red, rightwing lunatics?
Guess what, u get ONE rep, and the blue urban centers of your taker states get 10 times the number of reps?, how's THEM fuckin apples sound?!

[B.See]

24. That's why REICH wingers and shit red counties

gerrymander the fuck out of voting districts in the first place. To ensure their MINORITY rule.

But you can count on Chief justice STEPHEN to fuzzy logic the shit out of racism and discrimination every fkng time.

[Carlitos Brigante]

7. This is sick, Uncle Ruckus type shit. Even for this talking hemorrhoid. nt

[dalton99a]

8. NEXT: Thomas declares anti-lynching statutes unconstitutional

"I performed a word search on the Constitution and couldn't find anything that pertained to lynching"

[sakabatou]

9. Clarence Thomas goes full Uncle Ruckus

[Hermit-The-Prog]

10. The Subversive Court works to produce a white supremacist, Christofascist nation.

[erronis]

14. But the actual goal is to just disable the US and democracy

because they are still powerful forces against world-wide autocracy.

Too bad most Americans don't know anything about history. Some do, about the US Civil War. But I'll bet most wouldn't know the causes of WW-I or WW-II.

[bringthePaine]

15. refuKKKchickens come in all colors - its the only equality they condone

[catbyte]

16. Yo, Clarence...

[Hekate]

28. [phone]

[Kid Berwyn]

17. Sad. Oh, well.

Clarence Thomas Secretly Participated in Koch Network Donor Events

https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-secretly-attended-koch-brothers-donor-events-scotus

[TomSlick]

18. A self-loathing black man.

[Bucky]

25. To be entirely fair, I mostly loathe him too

[elleng]

31. Very sad.

[heckles65]

20. "I got mine -

- too bad about you!"

[bmichaelh]

21. Not in same league as Marshall

Thurgood Marshall was one of the NAACP attorneys that argued Brown vs Education in front of Supreme Court.

How many of the current Supreme Court justices could argue successfully in front of the Supreme Court.

Some of the current SCOTUS are not in the same league as Marshall.

[OMGWTF]

23. Just like driving, if you want to move forward select D. To go backward select R.

[C Moon]

26. I think he's paying back someone for gifts.

[Permanut]

27. Okay, now let's move on to the Loving decision.

[Hekate]

30. Thomas's comments on Dobbs put us all on notice regarding every past decision based on the right to privacy

Seriously. Think about how wide ranging that is.

[wryter2000]

32. Next...

Uncle Clarence denounces Loving v. virginia.