Clarence Thomas

Thomas married Virginia Lamp on May 30, 1987. He has one child, Jamal Adeen Thomas, from a previous marriage.

Thomas's father left the family when he was two, and his mother raised two sons. After a fire left the family homeless, Thomas went to live with his maternal grandfather, who ran businesses in Savannah and taught him discipline and a strong work ethic.

Thomas grew up in Georgia and attended segregated public and parochial schools. At 16, he earned admission to a boarding-school seminary and pursued the Catholic priesthood. He later studied at Conception Seminary from 1967 to 1968, but abandoned that goal after Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination and became dissatisfied with the Catholic Church's response to the civil-rights movement.

He transferred to the College of the Holy Cross, graduating in 1971 with a degree in English literature. He then attended Yale Law School and received his law degree in 1974. After admission to the Missouri bar, he worked in the Missouri attorney general's office, became an attorney with Monsanto Company, and served as legislative assistant to Senator John Danforth.

Thomas became assistant secretary for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Education in 1981. In 1982, President Ronald Reagan appointed him chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a position he held until 1990. He was nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by President George H. W. Bush in 1990.

After less than two years on the D.C. Circuit, Thomas was nominated by President George H. W. Bush to the Supreme Court in 1991. His Senate confirmation hearings became highly contentious after Anita Hill, a former employee at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, accused him of sexual harassment. Thomas denied the allegations and criticized the proceedings as unprofessional.

The Senate confirmed Thomas in October 1991 by a narrow margin. He took his seat on October 23, 1991, becoming the second Black justice to serve on the Supreme Court.

Thomas is associated with a conservative judicial philosophy and has been described as taking an originalist approach that can extend further to the right than that of other justices. He is also known for asking few questions during oral arguments, maintaining a notably quiet presence on the bench.

He contributed heavily to Justice Antonin Scalia's opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller, concerning gun rights, and to Justice Anthony Kennedy's opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, concerning campaign-finance law. Thomas wrote the conservative majority opinion in Good News Club v. Milford Central School, holding that a public school violated the First Amendment by refusing to allow a religious club to meet there.

In his dissent in Gonzales v. Raich, Thomas argued that Congress's Commerce Clause powers did not extend to regulating a woman growing medicinal marijuana for personal use under state authorization. His selected opinions also include majority opinions in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, Garland v. Cargill, and Oklahoma v. Environmental Protection Agency.