Is Samuel L. Jackson in Trouble For Trolling a Supreme Court Judge?
Celebrities across Hollywood have come out with their takes on the SCOTUS decision to overturn 1973’s Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to abortion. Samuel L. Jackson is one of the latest to board the train and he’s here with an iconic rejoinder for Justice Clarence Thomas’ recent suggestion. Fans couldn’t help but applaud the witty way in which the Academy Award winner called out the Supreme Court Judge.
Justice Thomas suggests SCOTUS to “reconsider” older rulings
Justice Clarence Thomas, the second Black person to ever serve on the Supreme Court in 1991, nominated by President George H. W. Bush, suggested the Supreme Court reconsider other key decisions following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which include legalized birth control, sodomy and the 2015 case establishing the right to same-sex marriage. He said:
“In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell. Because any substantive due process decision is ‘demonstrably erroneous,’ … we have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents.”
Samuel L. Jackson took a jibe at Justice Thomas
Samuel L. Jackson (not so) subtly taunted the Supreme Court Judge, dubbing him Uncle Clarence.
How’s Uncle Clarence feeling about Overturning Loving v Virginia??!!
— Samuel L. Jackson (@SamuelLJackson) June 25, 2022
Jackson posted the above tweet on Friday, which referred to the 1967 ruling that found interracial marriage bans unconstitutional. The fact that this is not just some arbitrary landmark ruling but one instrumental in the Judge’s life itself (Justice Thomas, 74, a Black man, has been married to his wife Virginia Thomas, a white woman, since 1987), is what hit home with Jackson’s fans.
— The Rose🌹☮️🇺🇸🦅💙💙💙 (@melindadenson1) June 25, 2022
Public and political response to Justice Thomas and the Roe v. Wade verdict
The Obergefell v. Hodges case that guaranteed the right to marriage for same-sex couples was a historic moment in US history and one of its plaintiffs Jim Obergefell gave a statement to PEOPLE:
“Clarence Thomas is a Supreme Court justice appointed by humans, he is not the Supreme Deity. The millions of loving couples who have the right to marriage equality to form their own families do not need Clarence Thomas imposing his individual twisted morality upon them. If you want to see an error in judgment, Clarence Thomas, look in the mirror.”
There have been nationwide protests since the overturning of Roe v. Wade which reversed almost 50 years’ worth of precedent giving states the authority to pass their own laws regarding abortion. Some states like Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, and South Dakota have already banned abortion in their states since the SCOTUS’ ruling.
President Joe Biden has also weighed in, calling the ruling a “realization of an extreme ideology and a tragic error by the Supreme Court.”
Source: People
