Joe Scarborough took to task Justice Clarence Thomas’ much-publicized concurring opinion – which takes aim at contraception access and same-sex marriage rights but not interracial marriage – exclaiming that the “hypocrisy is extraordinary” on Monday’s “Morning Joe.”
In his opinion to the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote on Friday that abortion is just the beginning:
“In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell,” he wrote, effectively drawing a bead on previously codified rights. “Because any substantive due process decision is ‘demonstrably erroneous,’ we have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents.”
Scarborough said Thomas’ hypocrisy was particularly “fascinating”: Why reconsider these landmark Supreme Court cases and not 1967’s Loving v. Virginia, which legalized interracial marriage in the U.S.?
Because Thomas’ wife, Ginni Thomas, is white, he said.
“He talked about how contraception rights should be reviewed again. He talked about marriage equality, how that should be opened up. He talked about what consenting adults can do in the privacy of their bedroom, that should be taken up. But he didn’t, for some reason, talk about loving … He didn’t talk about interracial marriages,” Scarborough said.
He continued: “I saw that as being so typical of these Republicans, these so-called ‘pro-life’ Republicans, and what they would do for their own children, what they would do for their own loved ones if medically necessary if there was a crisis, and yet, what they won’t do for poor women in rural states that are thousands of miles away from where they can have a safe procedure.”
Scarborough is hardly the first to point out the self-serving nature of Thomas’ opinion — nor is it the first time this year that Thomas’ marriage has come under fire. Ginni Thomas is a prominent Republican activist; her encouragement of Trump officials to overturn the 2020 election results in the aftermath of Jan. 6’s insurrection recently came under scrutiny in how it may have impacted Thomas’ dissenting opinion on the matter.
You can watch a clip of Scarborough’s statement above.