Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are calling on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from Jan. 6 cases after his wife's efforts to undo the election of Pres. Joe Biden were made public.
Between November of 2020 to January of 2021, Thomas' wife Ginni Thomas sent 29 text messages to Mark Meadows, Trump White House chief of staff, urging him that the election should be overturned. The messages were then obtained by the House select committee during the investigation of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Sen. Cory Booker, among others, are now calling on Justice Thomas to recuse himself from future Jan. 6–related cases.
Rory Little, Professor at UC Hastings College of the Law and former federal prosecutor who clerked at the Supreme Court, told KCBS Radio it's difficult to implicate Thomas in his wife's actions.
"Presumably other justices have had spouses who have strong opinions on various controversial matters," Little remarked. "I'm not defending Ginni Thomas and I'm certainly not defending Clarence Thomas, but whether he should recuse from every January 6th case or trial I think is a much more difficult question."
Little said Thomas definitely should have recused himself in 2021 when the Supreme Court was considering whether White House records should be released, as his wife's records were part of those documents. However, for future recusals, Little was less convinced. "His wife clearly has strong opinions, but I'm not sure that you would necessarily say he can't be impartial," he said.
There is a federal statute that says a judge must recuse if the judge's impartiality might reasonably be questioned, but Little said it is unknown if the statute actually controls Supreme Court Justices.
"The issue of when Supreme Court Justices should recuse themselves has come up repeatedly in the past and the Supreme Court, unlike other federal courts, has no ethics rules that apply to them, no code of ethics," he explained. "There's no constitutional constraints on the Justices, they have to make their own opinions."
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