Clarence thomas supreme court

US Supreme Court justice since

For other people named Clarence Thomas, see Clarence Thomas (disambiguation).

Clarence Thomas (born June 23, ) is an American lawyer and jurist who has served since as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. President George H. W. Bushnominated him to succeed Thurgood Marshall. After Marshall, Thomas is the second African American to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court and has been its longest-serving member since Anthony Kennedy's retirement in He has also been the Court's oldest member since Stephen Breyer retired in

Thomas was born in Pin Point, Georgia. After his father abandoned the family, he was raised by his grandfather in a poor Gullah community near Savannah, Georgia. Growing up as a devout Catholic, Thomas originally intended to be a priest in the Catholic Church but became dissatisfied with its efforts to combat racism and abandoned his aspiration to join the clergy. He graduated with honors from the College of the Holy Cross in and earned his Juris Doctor in from Yale Law School. Upon graduating, he was appointed as an assistant attorney general in

Eighth Chairman of the EEOC, May 6, - March 8,

Associate Justice Clarence Thomas was named the eighth Chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission by President Ronald Reagan on May 6, and served as Chairman of the EEOC until March 8, , making him the longest serving Chairman of the agency. In his first case as EEOC Chairman, Mr. Thomas sued an automaker for workplace discrimination and in , forced the automaker to agree to a $ million dollar settlement, one of the largest settlements in EEOC history.

Justice Thomas, a native of Savannah, Georgia, graduated from the College of Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts, where he received his M.A. degree in A graduate of Yale Law School with a J.D. degree in , he began his law career by serving as assistant attorney general of the state of Missouri. While at this post, he was responsible for representing Lincoln University, a traditionally black institution operated by the state, the State Tax Commission and several divisions of Missouri's Department of Revenue.

Following his tenure as assistant attorney general, Thomas served for two years as an attorney for the Monsanto Company, where he monitored a variety of federal regulations and handled antitrust, bankruptcy and product liability matters. Prior to joining the Commission, Clarence Thomas served for almost a year as the assistant secretary for civil rights in the U.S. Department of Education, after spending a year and a half as legislative assistant to Senator John C. Danforth (R-Mo).

In March, , Clarence Thomas was appointed by President Bush as a U.S. Court of Appeals Judge for the District of Columbia. President Bush subsequently nominated him as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, where he has served since October 23,

United States Supreme Court nomination

On July 1, , President George H. W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court of the United States to replace Thurgood Marshall, who had announced his retirement. At the time of his nomination, Thomas was a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit; President Bush had appointed him to that position in March

The nomination proceedings were contentious from the start, especially over the issue of abortion. Many women's groups and civil rights groups opposed Thomas based on his conservative political views, just as they had opposed Bush's Supreme Court nominee from the previous year, David Souter.

Toward the end of the confirmation process, sexual harassment allegations against Thomas by Anita Hill, a law professor who had previously worked under Thomas at the United States Department of Education and then at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, were leaked to the media from a confidential FBI report. The allegations led to further investigations and a media frenzy about sexual harassment. Televised hearings were re-opened and held by the Senate Judiciary Committee before the nomination was moved to the full, Democratic-controlled Senate for a vote.

On Octobe

Selected Opinions by Justice Thomas:

Topic:Gun Rights

A bump stock—an accessory for a semiautomatic rifle that allows the shooter to rapidly reengage the trigger (and therefore achieve a high rate of fire)—does not convert the rifle into a “machinegun” for the purposes of federal gun control laws.

Topic:Labor & Employment

The traditional four-factor test for a preliminary injunction governs NLRB requests for a preliminary injunction from a federal district court while administrative enforcement proceedings take place.

Topic:Trademarks

The Lanham Act prohibition on registering a trademark that consists of or comprises a name identifying a particular living person without their consent does not violate the First Amendment.

Topic:Criminal Trials & Prosecutions

The Confrontation Clause does not bar the admission of a non-testifying co-defendant's confession when the confession has been modified to avoid directly identifying the non-confessing co-defendant, and the court offers a limiting instruction that jurors may consider the confession only with respect to the confessing co-defendant.

Topic:Gun Rights

When the Second Amendment's plain text covers an individual's conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct. To justify a firearm regulation, the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with the nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation.

Topic:Role of Courts

A request for nominal damages satisfies the redressability element necessary for Article III standing when a plaintiff's claim is based on a completed violation of a legal right.