The Constitution offers only one remedy for misconduct on the Supreme Court: impeachment.

All other federal judges are held to the standards -- and penalties assigned for violation -- of the Judicial Code of Ethics for Federal Judges which includes these very clear and specific rules:

Canon 2: A Judge Should Avoid Impropriety and the Appearance of Impropriety in all Activities^[1]

  (A) Respect for Law. A judge should respect and comply with the law and should act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.

  (B) Outside Influence. A judge should not allow family, social, political, financial, or other relationships to influence judicial conduct or judgment. A judge should neither lend the prestige of the judicial office to advance the private interests of the judge or others nor convey or permit others to convey the impression that they are in a special position to influence the judge.

This code is clear. At a minimum it requires a judge to recuse himself from hearing any case in which personal entanglements could lead a fair-minded member of the public to question impartiality.

Now, let’s talk about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, Ginni Thomas. The Washington Post^[2] reports Ginni Thomas sent at least 21 messages to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows repeatedly pressing for Trump to pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

At the same time as these messages, Trump was speaking out publicly about his belief the Supreme Court should step in to overturn the results. “This is a major fraud on our nation,” Trump said the morning after the election. “So we’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court.”

At the very least the appearance of impartiality and conflicts of interest is clear. That alone is enough for Congress to begin impeachment proceedings against Justice Clarence Thomas.

The text messages reveal an extraordinary pipeline between Ginni Thomas and President Donald Trump’s top aide during a period when Trump and his allies were vowing to go to the Supreme Court in an effort to negate the election results. And in January, Justice Thomas was the lone dissenter in the Supreme Court's order rejecting Trump's bid to withhold documents from the January 6 panel.

Even before the Jan 6 select committee’s investigation into the attack on the Capitol revealed these text messages, the New York Times and others^[3] were calling for Justice Thomas to retire or resign after documenting numerous additional incidents of apparent conflicts of interest.

It’s too late to wait for Clarence Thomas to do the right thing on his own. It’s time for Congress to act. Please sign our petition calling on Congress to begin impeachment proceedings immediately.

^{[1] https://www.uscourts.gov/judges-judgeships/code-conduct-united-states-judges#c
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/24/virginia-thomas-mark-meadows-texts/
[3] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/31/is-ginni-thomas-a-threat-to-the-supreme-court}