Clarence Thomas Threatened to Resign Over Wage Issues in 2000

Justice Clarence Thomas pressed congressional lawmakers for a better wage early in his tenure on the Supreme Court docket, threatening to resign and galvanizing a marketing campaign by Republican backers to satisfy his calls for, in accordance with a memo addressed to the chief justice in June 2000.

The memo, reported earlier by ProPublica and obtained by The New York Times, underscores the monetary pressures Justice Thomas might have confronted on the time and laid naked a few of the accompanying political dangers had been Congress to extend the pay of the justices. The memo was contained in Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist’s papers held on the Hoover Establishment at Stanford.

In response to the memo, written by a high official of the federal courts system, L. Ralph Mecham, Justice Thomas broached the difficulty of pay with Consultant Cliff Stearns, Republican of Florida. Salaries on the Supreme Court docket had been unsatisfactory, the justice mentioned, and “one or more justices will soon leave” if compensation weren’t elevated.

These considerations prompted Mr. Stearns’s workplace to hunt assist from a lobbying group affiliated with the Podesta brothers to draft a invoice that might bolster justices’ pay. In doing so, a lobbyist requested for steerage from an array of federal judges, elevating reservations concerning the request and fear about how finest to reply.

In 2000, Justice Thomas’s salary, that of an affiliate justice on the court docket, was $173,600 a yr — greater than $300,000 right now. (Justice Thomas and the opposite affiliate justices are paid $285,400 a yr now.)

In a letter to Justice Thomas obtained by ProPublica, Mr. Stearns outlined the specifics of their dialog, vowing to look at the difficulty of pay. “I intend to look into a bill to raise the salaries of members of the Supreme Court,” he wrote. “As we agreed, it is worth a lot to Americans to have the Constitution properly interpreted.”

“His importance as a conservative was paramount,” Mr. Stearns informed ProPublica in a current interview. “We wanted to make sure he felt comfortable in his job and he was being paid properly.”

The Supreme Court docket didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.

Within the memo addressed to Chief Justice Rehnquist, Mr. Mecham cited the dialog and requested for his recommendation in dealing with “this delicate matter.”

Beneath Mr. Stearns’s proposal, Mr. Mecham wrote, an modification would separate the pay of justices from that of all different judges, in addition to from these of members of Congress and the cupboard. He would additionally set up a fee that might examine the salaries of justices.

Mr. Mecham’s letter to the chief justice questioned the knowledge of even pushing Congress to approve a pay elevate for Supreme Court docket justices.

“Within the judiciary, that could run the risk of looking like a dog in the manger type approach,” he wrote. “To Congress, it could be seen as another judiciary effort at delinkage from congressional pay, which even our best friends have refused to do, although it would be limited solely to justices, which might make it more palatable. But I am not at all sure.”

“From a tactical point of view, given the public statements made largely by Democratic lobbyists,” Mr. Mecham continued, “it will not take the Democrats and liberals in Congress very long to figure out that the prime beneficiaries who might otherwise leave the court presumably are Justices Thomas and Scalia.”

That yr, Chief Justice Rehnquist echoed those concerns about pay in a year-end report that cited “what I consider to be the most pressing issue facing the judiciary: the need to increase judicial salaries.”

The revelations about Justice Thomas’s complaints add to the controversy about ethics on the Supreme Court docket and his private funds, which have repeatedly led him to hunt the counsel and help of billionaire donors.

Round that point, Justice Thomas was carrying heavy debt. A yr earlier, Justice Thomas took out a $267,230 private mortgage from Anthony Welters, a well being care trade magnate, to purchase a leisure car that for years he failed to repay in full.

Abbie VanSickle contributed reporting.