Regressive political culture comes to GW
Why “Fire Justice Thomas” represented a dislike of dissent
By Alvin Wright
Guest Writer
Approximately two months ago, in response to the Dobbs v. Jackson Supreme Court case, some GW students created a petition to voice their concern. The Dobbs decision overruled Roe v. Wade, a landmark Supreme Court ruling in 1973 that granted a woman’s right to obtain an abortion.
The petition demanded that Justice Clarence Thomas, who has since then resigned from teaching at GW, be terminated from his employment. The petition garnered the signatures of over 11,000 students. To put that into context, that’s almost the entire undergraduate population at GW.
This raises the obvious question: why do these students want Justice Thomas gone? Did he violate any of the university’s policies? Did he act in a manner that imperiled the reputation of the school? Simply, what wrong did he do?
The reasons are outlined in the petition:
“With the recent Supreme Court decision that has stripped the right to bodily autonomy of people with wombs, and with his explicit intention to further strip the rights of queer people and remove the ability for people to practice safe sex without fear of pregnancy, it is evident that the employment of Clarence Thomas at the George Washington University is completely unacceptable.”
The petition’s request that Justice Thomas be removed from the GW Law School faculty is due to his prime role in the Dobbs decision. Justice Thomas was one of the six justices who voted in the Dobbs case to overturn Roe v. Wade. He wrote an opinion concurring with the majority, which explained the reasons Roe was overturned.
The petition didn’t end there.
It provided another reason for the demand, citing Justice Thomas’s, “wife’s part in the attempted coup in January of 2021.” They further added that Justice Thomas, “is actively making life unsafe for thousands of students on our campus (not to mention thousands of campuses across the country).” These are the reasons the petition outlined for demanding that Justice Thomas be fired from the University.
Following, I examine the validity of the reasons provided, and most importantly, I explain the implication of this situation on the school and our society overall.
Firstly, the petition claims that the Dobbs decision, “stripped the right to bodily autonomy of people with wombs.” You might be wondering what the term “people with wombs” means. You wouldn’t be judged if you didn’t know, as it’s a fairly novel term.
The term is simply an “inclusive” way of referring to people who have wombs, or for the pertinence of this article, people who can get an abortion. It’s a variation of other so-called inclusive terms such as “birthing person,” “pregnant people,” and “menstruators” that are now increasingly being used to refer to women.
So to be more inclusive in language, as it appears the authors of this petition intended, using “people with wombs” was apt.
Having established the connotation and usual intention behind the usage of this term, let’s address the claim. The Supreme Court did not strip women, or “people with wombs” in this case, of their bodily autonomy.
That is a highly misleading and at best, specious claim. The issue the case addressed was, “whether the Constitution, properly understood, confers a right to obtain an abortion.” Claiming that the Supreme Court stripped women of their bodily autonomy needlessly obfuscates the Supreme Court’s ruling for people who are not familiar with the case, and it renders the false impression that women, or “people with wombs,” won’t have freedom over their own bodies.
So let’s replace the term bodily autonomy with abortion. Did the Supreme Court strip women of their right to abortion? Even this framing obscures the full picture. The Supreme Court did invalidate the so-called “constitutional right” to abortion, but that doesn’t mean that women won’t have the right anymore.
It is tempting to view it that way since the Roe v. Wade decision, which granted the right to abortion, was overruled, but it’s not the case. What the decision means is that the abortion question is now a state issue.
As the majority opinion explicitly stated in Dobbs:
“We, therefore, hold that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. Roe and Casey must be overruled, and the authority to regulate abortion must be returned to the people and their elected representatives.”
As the last part of the statement clearly shows, the Supreme Court merely returned the issue of abortion to the people. That means from now onwards, people get to vote for representatives who can pass the abortion laws they desire.
That is not nearly or remotely the same as claiming that the Supreme Court stripped women of their right to abortion — these are completely different propositions. If, however, the Supreme Court did so, the states won’t be able to make laws regarding it. But the Supreme Court did not, which is why the states can.
Secondly, the petition’s points misrepresent the Supreme Court’s power. The Supreme Court has no constitutional authority to ban abortion. That is the job of a state’s legislature, which is why the Supreme Court returned the issue to the states.
As the majority stated in the Dobbs decision:
“Our sole authority is to exercise “judgment” — which is to say, the authority to judge what the law means and how it should apply to the case at hand.”
The petition misinterprets key elements of the Dobbs decision, the authority vested in the Supreme Court, and a demand to fire Justice Thomas based on these misunderstandings.
Next, the petition claims that Justice Thomas intends to:
“Further strip the rights of queer people and remove the ability for people to practice safe sex without fear of pregnancy.”
This is in reference to Justice Thomas’s concurring opinion in Dobbs, in which he suggested that other rights be revisited. He wrote:
“In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.”
However, the majority in Dobbs parted ways with Thomas. They made it exceedingly clear that their ruling only concerned abortion:
“We emphasize that our decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right. Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”
So even if these cases were reconsidered, it appears that the Court would be hesitant to overturn them. Additionally, the petition fails to realize that Justice Thomas’s opinion is well within the parameters of his Constitutional duty. It is neither a violation of the Constitution nor is it a violation of any single University policy.
The petition also said that Justice Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas, was allegedly involved in, “the attempted coup in January of 2021.” Whether or not this claim is accurate is a question for another time. What’s problematic is the underlying assumption in this claim — that Justice Thomas should be punished for what his wife did. How Ginni Thomas’s actions implicated Justice Thomas, the petition didn’t say.
Lastly, the petition notably failed to explain how Justice Thomas’s actions violate any of the University’s policies. Nowhere in the petition was this explained. It is evident that Justice Thomas simply exercised his duty as a Supreme Court Justice in accordance with the United States Constitution. He did not violate University policy in the process.
And it is evident that some students wanted Justice Thomas fired simply because he issued an opinion that contradicted their own.
Finally, this petition is indicative of a rotten aspect of current political culture: the war against dissent. It is rooted in this bizarre idea that we all ought to think the same way and agree on the same things; thus, if anyone dares dissent from the popularly-held views, they must be censured and ostracized.
As demonstrated in this instance, some students demanded Justice Thomas be fired from this school not because of any legitimate reason, but rather because he didn’t do what they wanted him to: vote to uphold Roe.
It’s fundamentally contrary to the ideas and model upon which this great country was founded, and it is highly detrimental to the ideas of freedom of speech and academic expression that this University’s student body purports to cherish.
In the end, if there is anything this entire effort has revealed, it is that the attempt to cast out Justice Thomas from this University is nothing more than a misguided demand that is the product of a misdirected, regressive political culture that cracks down on dissent.
Alvin Wright is a sophomore majoring in International Affairs.
