Time for Savannah to disown U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas?

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Many Savannahians give U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas the benefit of the doubt for being a hometown success story.

Some of that goodwill is running short. In fact, many Savannahians seem eager to disown Thomas.

Last month, Savannah College of Art and Design students encouraged the school to remove Thomas' name from a classroom building. More recently, a petition calling for Thomas’ impeachment from the high court eclipsed 1 million signatures, and quite a few of those John Hancocks belonged to locals.

The call for Thomas’ removal followed the release of his concurring opinion in the case that overturned Roe v. Wade. In addition to laying out his reasoning, Thomas used the brief to all but predict the court would soon use similar reasoning to invalidate other rulings, such as those involving same-sex marriage and access to contraception.

Thomas’ unusual statements also came at a time when he is under scrutiny for his indirect connections to attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Text message records show Thomas’s wife, Ginni, was in contact with a Trump administration official regarding the election results and encouraged him to “Release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down.”

Even more disturbing were Thomas’ votes in three cases related to the election, including one where he was the only dissenter in a challenge to the National Archives’ release of White House records to the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attacks.

For a justice who went a decade without asking a question from the bench during Supreme Court hearings, Thomas is making plenty of noise now.

Thomas is more likely to get disowned locally than impeached federally. Impeachment of a justice works the same as for a president: The House acts first and can impeach by majority vote; the Senate then holds a trial and removal requires a two-thirds vote.

Those who believe 17 Republican senators would vote to convict Thomas - and give President Joe Biden, a Democrat, a Supreme Court appointment - have taken up permanent residence in an “It’s a small world after all” boat.

Back here in the state of Chatham, appreciating Thomas is a chore. We can take pride in a hometown kid who grew up poor, Black and fatherless during the Jim Crow era only to rise above those circumstances to reach the highest levels of our government. Given his behavior, though, fewer and fewer of us are willing to claim him.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Calls for Savannah's Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas impeachment