Justice Clarence Thomas pressed congressional lawmakers for the next wage early in his tenure on the Supreme Court docket, threatening to resign and provoking 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 Occasions, underscores the monetary pressures Justice Thomas might have confronted on the time and laid naked among 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.
Based on the memo, written by a prime 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 “a number of justices will quickly go away” if compensation weren’t elevated.
These issues prompted Mr. Stearns’s workplace to hunt assist from a lobbying group affiliated with the Podesta brothers to draft a invoice that may 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 wage, that of an affiliate justice on the court docket, was $173,600 a yr — greater than $300,000 at present. (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 right into a invoice to boost the salaries of members of the Supreme Court docket,” he wrote. “As we agreed, it’s value quite a bit to Individuals to have the Structure correctly interpreted.”
“His significance as a conservative was paramount,” Mr. Stearns advised ProPublica in a latest interview. “We needed to verify he felt snug in his job and he was being paid correctly.”
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 may examine the salaries of justices.
Mr. Mecham’s letter to the chief justice questioned the knowledge of even pushing Congress to approve a pay increase for Supreme Court docket justices.
“Inside the judiciary, that might run the danger of trying like a canine within the manger sort method,” he wrote. “To Congress, it might be seen as one other judiciary effort at delinkage from congressional pay, which even our greatest mates have refused to do, though it will be restricted solely to justices, which could make it extra palatable. However I’m not in any respect positive.”
“From a tactical perspective, given the general public statements made largely by Democratic lobbyists,” Mr. Mecham continued, “it is not going to take the Democrats and liberals in Congress very lengthy to determine that the prime beneficiaries who may in any other case go away the court docket presumably are Justices Thomas and Scalia.”
That yr, Chief Justice Rehnquist echoed these issues about pay in a year-end report that cited “what I think about to be essentially the most urgent concern going through the judiciary: the necessity to enhance 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 assist 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 automobile that for years he didn’t repay in full.
Abbie VanSickle contributed reporting.