More than 50 Kern County teachers who were named Teacher of the Year in their school districts were honored Thursday evening at the annual Kern County Education Champions of the Year celebration at Bell Tower Plaza in downtown Bakersfield.Read more

Sometimes having a popular neighbor can make a big difference, as Tejon Ranch Co. has learned with the opening of Hard Rock Casino Tejon.Read more

The energy sector has long occupied such a central position in the local economy that, when it spun off several years ago from the annual Kern County Economic Summit, less prominent industries couldn’t help but benefit.Read more

City of Bakersfield department heads told the City Council that the rising cost of personnel, insurance and other expenses is driving up budgets even amid efforts to make cuts.Read more

The state of Louisiana on Thursday afternoon urged the Supreme Court in Danco Laboratories v. Louisiana and GenBioPro v. Louisianato leave in place an order by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit that prohibits the mailing of mifepristone, one of two drugs used in medication abortions, which are in turn the most common form of abortion in the United States. Justice Samuel Alito, who fields emergency requests from the 5th Circuit, on Monday temporarily paused the lower court’s order to give the Supreme Court time to consider a request from two manufacturers of mifepristone to reinstate access to that drug. Alito’s order means that mifepristone will remain widely available nationwide at least until Monday, May 11, the date on which the temporary pause expires.In a 58-page filing, Louisiana told the justices that the Biden administration’s decision to make mifepristone available by mail was part of an effort to “undermine” the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning the constitutional right to an abortion. It wrote that mifepristone coming from out of state by mail is “causing approximately 1,000 illegal abortions in Louisiana each month.” Moreover, it added, the manufacturers’ “real fear is that, under the Fifth Circuit’s decision, they might not be able to sell as many abortion drugs as they would like.”But if the court does opt to pause the 5th Circuit’s order, the state concluded, it would agree that the court should take up the case now and hear “oral argument before the summer recess.”Thursday’s filing was the latest chapter in a dispute over access to mifepristone that dates back to the Biden administration. In 2024, the Supreme Court ruled that doctors and medical groups opposed to abortion did not have a legal right to sue, known as standing, to challenge the Food and Drug Administration’s expansion of access to mifepristone.That case, FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, was brought by several doctors who are opposed to abortion on religious or moral grounds, as well as medical groups whose members are opposed to abortion. U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk rescinded both the FDA’s initial approval of the drug in 2000 and its 2016 and 2021 expansions of access to it, which included allowing the drug to be used through the 10th week of pregnancy, allowing health-care providers who are not physicians to prescribe the drug, and permitting it to be prescribed without an in-person visit.On appeal, the 5th Circuit upheld the part of Kacsmaryk’s ruling that rolled back the agency’s 2016 and 2021 changes that had expanded access to mifepristone.In June 2024, the Supreme Court reversed the lower court’s ruling and sent the case back to the lower courts. In his opinion for the court, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that the challengers had “sincere legal, moral, ideological, and policy objections” to elective abortion “by others” and to the FDA’s 2016 and 2021 changes to the conditions on the use of the drug. But those objections, he said, did not provide a right to challenge the changes, because the doctors and medical groups had not shown that they would be harmed by the FDA’s mifepristone policies.Louisiana filed its own lawsuit last fall, asking a federal judge to reinstate the in-person dispensing requirement. After the district court put the case on hold to give the FDA time to complete its own review of mifepristone’s safety, Louisiana went to the 5th Circuit, asking that court to re-impose the requirement while litigation continues. The court of appeals ruled that Louisiana has a right to sue because, by allowing mifepristone to be prescribed by telehealth and sent by mail, the “FDA ‘opened the door for mifepristone to be remotely prescribed to Louisiana women,’” even though Louisiana generally bars abortion.The drug manufacturers, Danco and GenBioPro, came to the Supreme Court on Saturday, asking the justices to intervene. Danco told the court that the 5th Circuit should have applied the same analysis that the Supreme Court used in 2024 to conclude that the doctors and medical groups did not have standing. And in particular, it said, “Louisiana’s theory—that it can base standing on having to pay those doctors if someone who received FDA-approved mifepristone through the mail seeks follow-up care to treat a complication—is a more attenuated version of the” theories that the court specifically rejected two years ago. And Louisiana’s claim that it is injured because of the disconnect between federal law and its own state law is not the kind of injury that courts can review, Danco said.GenBioPro contended that if the 5th Circuit’s order is put on hold, it merely “will allow the years-long status quo to remain in force while the Food and Drug Administration (‘FDA’) completes its ongoing review” of mifepristone’s safety. Moreover, it suggested, the lower court’s “‘unusually broad and novel view of standing’” “would allow States to challenge virtually any agency action whenever they allege downstream costs or interference with state policy.”In its brief on Thursday, Louisiana countered that it has made a clear showing that it has a legal right to sue. First, it said, its sovereignty has been injured, both by the violation of its laws and by its inability to enforce those laws. Second, Louisiana said, it has suffered precisely the kind of “pocketbook” injury that provides standing to sue. It has had to spend, the state told the justices, more than $17,000 just to investigate three cases involving mifepristone sent through the mail from out of state. And it has also had to pay “over $92,000 in Medicaid dollars … for emergency room care and hospitalization resulting from just two mifepristone-induced abortions in 2025.”It is equally clear, Louisiana argued, that reinstating the in-person dispensing requirement would provide relief for the state’s injuries – another key factor in determining whether a plaintiff has a right to sue. As evidence, Louisiana pointed to statements by the drug companies’ allies warning about the effects of allowing the 5th Circuit’s order to remain in place. For example, it observed, the Guttmacher Institute contends that requiring mifepristone to be prescribed and dispensed in person “would severely restrict access to mifepristone in every state.”Finally, Louisiana asserted that it is likely to prevail on the merits of its claims – an important factor in determining whether preliminary relief is appropriate. The FDA itself, Louisiana stressed, is not defending the decision to allow mifepristone to be sent through the mail. And both lower courts, it said, “also rightly concluded that Louisiana is likely to succeed in its” argument that the FDA violated the federal law governing administrative agencies when it reached that decision.The drug companies will have an opportunity to reply to Louisiana’s brief. The court is likely to act on their request before Monday, May 11, at 5 p.m. EDT, when Alito’s temporary stay is scheduled to expire.Read more

Immigration Matters is a recurring series by César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández that analyzes the court’s immigration docket, highlighting emerging legal questions about new policy and enforcement practices.A key feature of the United States’ humanitarian approach to migration will be handed entirely to executive branch officials if the Supreme Court sides with the Trump administration in a legal fight that reached the justices at the end of last month. The administration claims Congress authorized the executive branch to give and take away legal relief known as Temporary Protected Status, free from any judicial oversight. Unreviewable power to decide which migrants can lawfully live and work in the United States would be extraordinary, but it wouldn’t be the first time that the court has given immigration officials remarkable power.***Congress enacted TPS as part of the Immigration Act of 1990, which permits the Secretary of Homeland Security to allow citizens of a country in turmoil to temporarily remain in the United States. The secretary can designate a country for TPS for as much as 18 months, but there is no cap on the number of times a country’s designation can be renewed. Individuals who receive TPS may also obtain a work permit. TPS differs from asylum, another humanitarian provision of immigration law, in one important respect. While asylum requires proof that a specific individual will be targeted because of their race, religion, political opinion, or other protected basis, TPS applies to all citizens of a country that the Secretary of Homeland Security deems unsafe (except for people convicted of a felony or at least two misdemeanors) so long as they are already in the United States when DHS announces the secretary’s decision to designate the country for TPS.Since President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year, Kristi Noem, while serving as Secretary of Homeland Security, tried to terminate TPS for 13 countries. The cases argued late last month, Trump v. Miot and Mullin v. Doe, addressed Noem’s decision to terminate TPS for Haiti and Syria. The supposed basis for this termination: If, “after consultation with appropriate agencies of the Government,” the secretary determines that conditions in a country designated for TPS are no longer unsafe, DHS may terminate TPS, according to the 1990 law signed by President George H.W. Bush.The Justice Department claims that Congress gave the Secretary of Homeland Security unreviewable discretion to grant or terminate TPS. Specifically, in its brief, as in U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer’s argument before the justices, the government points to a section of the TPS statute that provides, “There is no judicial review of any determination of the Attorney General with respect to the designation, or termination or extension of a designation, of a foreign state under this subsection.”The challengers – Haitian and Syrian citizens who currently hold TPS – disagree. They argue that Congress enacted the TPS statute to limit the executive’s humanitarian use of discretion. “Congress enacted the TPS statute to cabin executive power, not unleash it,” lawyers for Haitian challengers contend. Their counterparts representing Syrian TPS beneficiaries echoed this sentiment, telling the justices, “Congress enacted the TPS statute to constrain unbridled Executive power.”During oral argument, four justices signaled their discomfort with the government’s interpretation of the TPS statute. Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan, all nominated by Democratic presidents, clearly showed disagreement with the government’s position regarding the role of the courts. These justices also signaled that they do not believe that Noem followed the consultative process that the 1990 law requires to terminate each of these TPS designations.On the other end of the court’s ideological spectrum, only Justice Amy Coney Barrett revealed skepticism that the courts can’t review a TPS termination under any circumstances. But even her skepticism was mixed. Noting that the challengers claim that courts can review the process Noem used to consult other agencies prior to terminating TPS, but not Noem’s determination that a country is no longer unsafe, Barrett suggested that this is a meaningless distinction. “[W]hy would Congress permit review of the procedural aspect when, really, what everybody cares about much more is the substance?” Barrett asked Ahilan Arulanantham, the lawyer who argued on behalf of the Haitian TPS recipients.A decision that interprets the Immigration and Nationality Act, the federal law governing immigration, to give the Secretary of Homeland Security complete discretion to end TPS, leaving no room for courts to ensure compliance with the required process, would certainly be extraordinary. But in immigration law, extraordinary is the baseline. The court has long shown remarkable deference to Congress and the executive to set whatever conditions they like when it comes to migrants’ right to enter the United States. As the court explained in an 1892 decision that Arulanantham mentioned, Nishimura Ekiu v. United States, “It is an accepted maxim of international law that every sovereign nation has the power, as inherent in sovereignty and essential to self-preservation, to forbid the entrance of foreigners within its dominions, or to admit them only in such cases and upon such conditions as it may see fit to prescribe.”The court has imposed more limits on the power that Congress and the president have to dictate the terms of a migrant’s life once in the United States. Immigration officials must then respect certain constitutional restraints on the power of the federal government, but the court has regularly been willing to clarify where it sets the constitutional bar.The court laid this bare in a 1976 case involving a due-process challenge to a federal law that bars migrants from Medicare unless they are permanent residents who have lived in the United States for at least five years. “In its exercise of its broad power over naturalization and immigration, Congress regularly makes rules that would be unacceptable if applied to citizens,” a unanimous court announced. More recently, the court reiterated that federal immigration officials must obey the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures, but permitted them, at least temporarily, to consider a person’s racial appearance when deciding who might be violating immigration laws. (And though the Justice Department grounded its legal argument in the constitutional flexibility that the court has long given immigration officers, the court’s decision affects U.S. citizens too. Indeed, lower courts noted that immigration officers detained and questioned several citizens in the Los Angeles area last summer.)The government’s position is also strengthened by the fact that Barrett, the one member of the court’s conservative bloc who asked Sauer pointed questions about the government’s broad view of executive branch discretion, recently wrote that courts are sometimes powerless to stop illegal executive actions. “No one disputes that the Executive has a duty to follow the law. But the Judiciary does not have unbridled authority to enforce this obligation—in fact, sometimes the law prohibits the Judiciary from doing so,” Barrett wrote on behalf of the six-justice majority in Trump v. CASA, in which the court wiped away lower court decisions blocking the Trump administration from implementing nationwide the president’s executive order limiting access to birthright citizenship. (A separate challenge to the birthright citizenship executive order is pending before the court.)If the majority of the court sides with the Trump administration, TPS is likely to become a legal tool available to presidents to wield at their political whim. The Secretary of Homeland Security will be able to turn humanitarian protections on and off without any judicial oversight. Without courts to ensure that DHS consults with the State Department or other government agencies, TPS would become just another tool in the executive branch’s policy arsenal. At times and for whatever reason, an administration could grant TPS to anyone living in the United States who doesn’t have another source of permission to remain or work here. At other times, under different political conditions, an administration could yank such permission to live and work here at a moment’s notice. Whatever the policy choice, the end result would be immense unpredictability that may make the cost of requesting TPS – revealing one’s identity and whereabouts to the federal government – too high, pushing more people away from using the legal option that Congress created.Read more

Justice Clarence Thomas, now the second-longest-serving justice in Supreme Court history, has occupied a singular place on the court for more than three decades. In this column, I describe some of the most notable facts about this incredibly influential (and polarizing) justice.First, some background. Born in 1948 near Savannah, Georgia, and raised in Pin Point by his grandparents after his father left their family, Thomas came to the court with a background that differed sharply from many of his predecessors: African American, Southern, and from a lower-income family, with no family tradition in the law or judiciary.Thomas graduated from the College of the Holy Cross in 1971 and Yale Law School in 1974. After law school, he was admitted to the Missouri bar and began his career as an assistant attorney general in Missouri from 1974 to 1977. He then worked as an attorney for Monsanto in St. Louis from 1977 to 1979, before joining the office of Sen. John Danforth as a legislative assistant from 1979 to 1981. Thomas’ federal executive-branch experience followed quickly: assistant secretary for civil rights at the Department of Education from 1981 to 1982, and then chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from 1982 to 1990.President George H.W. Bush first nominated Thomas to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Oct. 30, 1989, to fill the seat previously held by Robert Bork. The Senate confirmed him by voice vote on March 6, 1990, and his commission issued the same day. His time on the D.C. Circuit was brief, however: In July 1991, Bush nominated Thomas to succeed Justice Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court. The Senate Judiciary Committee reported the nomination without recommendation, and the full Senate confirmed Thomas by a 52-48 roll-call vote on Oct. 15, 1991. He received his Supreme Court commission on Oct. 18, 1991, and took his seat on Oct. 23, 1991.The nomination itself remains one of the most closely contested in modern Supreme Court history – especially given the sexual harassment claims made against him by Anita Hill, who worked under Thomas at the EEOC. By the numbers, the Justices Database gave him an ABA rating of “qualified,” a divided committee process occurred, there were 11 hearing days (again, many dealing with the allegations made against Thomas), and a final Senate vote of 52 supporters and 48 opponents. Those numbers help frame the long, ironic arc of Thomas’ tenure: A justice confirmed by one of the narrowest, and controversial, margins in the court’s modern history has become one of its most institutionally durable and jurisprudentially consequential members.1. Length of serviceMeasured by total days of service on the Supreme Court, as of Wednesday, Thomas now sits essentially at the top of the court’s longevity list. Justice William O. Douglas remains first, with 13,358 days, but Thomas’ 12,615 days place him second – just ahead of Justices Stephen J. Field, John Paul Stevens, John Marshall, Hugo Black, John Marshall Harlan I, Joseph Story, William Brennan, and James Wayne. The ranking is striking because it places Thomas not merely among long-serving modern justices, but in a historical group that spans nearly the entire life of the court, from early institutional figures like Marshall and Story to 20th-century constitutional giants like Douglas, Black, Brennan, and Stevens. And, as described below, his length of service has given Thomas an unusually long runway to move from an isolated voice on the court’s right flank to a justice whose originalist and text-centered approach now often shapes the court’s direction.2. AgeIf Thomas were to leave the court at the end of this term, when he will be 78, he would be entering the lower end of the court’s oldest-departure range rather than its extreme upper tier. Six justices in this comparison left the court at age 78: Joseph P. Bradley, Earl Warren, Harlan I, Willis Van Devanter, William Cushing, and James McReynolds. Another 23 justices left at older ages, including Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Samuel Nelson at 80; Stephen Field and Joseph McKenna at 81; Anthony Kennedy, Louis Brandeis, and Gabriel Duvall at 82; Thurgood Marshall and Stephen Breyer at 83; William Brennan at 84; Hugo Black and Harry Blackmun at 85; Roger Taney and Ruth Bader Ginsburg at 87; and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and John Paul Stevens at 90. The comparison underscores a central feature of Thomas’ position: although he is already one of the longest-serving justices in history, he is not yet among the very oldest justices to serve, meaning that his tenure is historically extraordinary because of its early start and long duration, not simply because of age. Given that, if he chooses to stay on it, he may still have many years ahead of him on the court.3. Most cited opinionThomas’ most-cited majority opinions according to CourtListener’s data show the breadth of his influence outside the headline constitutional cases most associated with him. His highest-cited majority opinion in this set is Swierkiewicz v. Sorema N.A., a 2002 civil-procedure and employment-discrimination pleading decision cited by 8,667 opinions, followed by Astrue v. Ratliff, a 2010 case which concerned a suit against the government and the recovery of certain fees, with 6,636 citations, and National Railroad Passenger Corp. v. Morgan, a 2002 employment discrimination case focused on certain procedural issues, with 6,551. The list is striking because many of the leading cases are not culture-war landmarks but workhorse precedents in civil procedure, employment law, habeas, jurisdiction, statutory interpretation, qualified immunity, and personal jurisdiction. More recent constitutional decisions are also beginning to appear, most notably 2022’s New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which held that there was a constitutional right to carry a firearm, which already has 2,173 citing opinions. Together, the cases suggest that Thomas’ majority-opinion legacy is not only ideological or theoretical; it is also deeply embedded in the day-to-day citation network of federal and state courts.4. Number of total opinionsThomas’ output also places him among the court’s most prolific opinion writers. With 835 total opinions, including 10 so far this term, he ranks just below Blackmun, Scalia, Justice Melville Fuller, Justice John Marshall Harlan II, and Harlan I, and just ahead of Thurgood Marshall. The comparison is useful because it separates longevity from output: Thomas is already the second-longest-serving justice, but in total opinions he falls lower on the historical list than Douglas, Stevens, Brennan, Black, Justice Byron White, and several others. That reflects both the modern court’s smaller merits docket and Thomas’ particular role as a justice who has often written separately – sometimes in concurrences or dissents that later became doctrinal markers – while authoring fewer total opinions than some earlier justices who served during higher-volume eras.5. Joined most/most opposedThomas’ majority opinions have generally drawn their strongest support from the court’s conservative justices, but the pattern is not simply ideological. Justice Amy Coney Barrett has joined Thomas-written majorities in all of their shared cases in this dataset, although the sample is still relatively small at 24 cases. Justice Brett Kavanaugh follows at 96.1%, Rehnquist at 95.6%, Scalia at 93.8%, Kennedy at 93.4%, Chief Justice John Roberts at 92.6%, Justice Samuel Alito at 92.3%, and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor at 91.2%.The least frequent joiners are mostly the court’s more liberal members during Thomas’ tenure: Stevens joined 62.1% of Thomas majorities, Blackmun 63.0%, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson 66.7%, Justice Sonia Sotomayor 69.8%, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg 69.9%, Justice Elena Kagan 71.8%, and Breyer 72.2%. The notable outliers are Justices Neil Gorsuch and Byron White, who appear in both the bottom and top panels because the dataset has fewer than 20 non-Thomas justices and because each still joined roughly four-fifths of Thomas’ majorities, underscoring that even Thomas’ least frequent partners often agreed with the judgment when he was assigned the court’s opinion.6. Oral argument engagementThomas’ oral-argument silence became one of the most distinctive features of his public identity on the court. After asking a question from the bench on Feb. 22, 2006, he went nearly 10 years without asking another substantive question during oral argument, breaking that silence on Feb. 29, 2016, in Voisine v. United States, a Second Amendment-related case involving whether misdemeanor domestic-violence convictions could trigger a federal firearms ban. The moment drew notice precisely because it interrupted a decade-long pattern. Thomas had long defended his restraint as a matter of courtroom courtesy, arguing that the justices should let advocates present their arguments rather than constantly interrupting them.Even after the 2016 exchange, he remained a relatively rare participant at argument, with only limited exceptions – including a brief joke in 2013 poking fun at Yale Law School – until the court’s telephonic arguments during the COVID-19 pandemic changed the format. Under Roberts’ turn-taking system, each justice received a distinct opportunity to question counsel, and Thomas began speaking regularly; in the first four telephonic arguments, he participated in each one, after taking no speaking turns in the four most recent pre-pandemic arguments. The shift did not transform Thomas into one of the court’s most active questioners, but it showed that his silence correlated with, at least partly, the free-for-all structure of traditional oral argument that he had criticized.7. Number of solo dissentsThomas’ solo dissents are one of the clearest statistical markers of his independence on the court. With 52 solo dissents, he ranks 10th in the data provided here, placing him behind Douglas, Stevens, Harlan I, Black, Harlan II, McReynolds, Rehnquist, Field, and Justice David Brewer. The number is especially striking in the modern context: among the current justices, Sotomayor is the closest at 18 solo dissents, while Alito has 13, Gorsuch has eight, Jackson has three, and Roberts and Kavanaugh each have one. Thomas therefore has nearly three times as many solo dissents as Sotomayor and four times as many as Alito, even though he has served during an era in which the court has been, on balance, conservative throughout his tenure. That nuance matters: Thomas’ solo dissents are not simply the record of a conservative justice resisting a liberal court; they reflect a justice often willing to stand apart even from conservative colleagues when he believes precedent, constitutional text, or original meaning points further than the court is prepared to go.8. Most reversed circuitThomas’ majority opinions have most often reversed or vacated decisions from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, by a wide margin. In the data provided here, Thomas wrote 57 decisions reviewing 9th Circuit rulings, and 44 of them reversed or vacated the lower court, a rate of 77.2%. The next-largest raw totals are much lower: 14 reversals or vacaturs from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, 11 each from the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 4th and Federal Circuits, and 10 each from the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 2nd and 10th Circuits. Looking at percentages adds a slightly different perspective: the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 1st Circuit had the highest reversal/vacatur rate at 80.0%, followed by the 9th Circuit at 77.2%, the 10th Circuit at 71.4%, and the 4th Circuit at 68.8%. Together, the numbers show both the 9th Circuit’s unusually large presence in Thomas’ reversal docket and the broader pattern that, when Thomas writes for the court, the lower-court decision under review is usually reversed or vacated across most circuits in this set.9. Issue area written on mostBased on Supreme Cout Database coding, Thomas’ majority-opinion assignments are concentrated most heavily in economic-activity cases. In the data provided here, he authored 82 majority opinions in that issue area, well ahead of criminal procedure with 63, judicial power with 32, and civil rights with 27. The comparison with the court’s full issue-area distribution during Thomas’ tenure sharpens the point: economic activity is also the area where Thomas is most overrepresented, with his share of majority authorships running about 11.7% points above the court’s overall share of cases in that category. By contrast, he is underrepresented in civil rights by about 6.5% points, First Amendment cases by about 2.0 points, due process by about 1.6 points, and criminal procedure and judicial power by about 1.3 points each. That pattern suggests that Thomas’ majority-opinion portfolio is not simply a mirror of the court’s docket; it leans especially toward economic and regulatory disputes, while some of the areas most associated with high-salience constitutional conflict make up a smaller share of his majority-writing assignments.10. Former clerks who became federal judgesAccording to data from the Federal Judicial Center, Thomas’ influence also extends through the federal judiciary by way of his former clerks. In the data provided here, 10 former Thomas clerks later became federal judges: Allison Eid, James Ho, Gregory Katsas, Eric Miller, Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, Carl Nichols, Martha Pacold, Neomi Rao, Allison Rushing, and David Stras. Six were appointed to federal courts of appeals, while four were appointed to federal district courts. The appellate appointments span several influential courts – the D.C., 4th, 5th, 8th, 9th, and 10th Circuits – while the district-court appointments include the District of Columbia, the Middle District of Florida, and the Northern District of Illinois. One notable feature of the group is timing: all 10 were appointed by President Donald Trump, meaning Thomas’ clerk network became especially visible during the 2017–2020 wave of Republican judicial appointments. The group also reflects the broader conservative legal pipeline: several had prior clerkships with prominent conservative appellate judges, service in state solicitor general offices or the Justice Department, academic posts, or state supreme court experience before joining the federal bench.11. Opinion assignmentsThomas’ role in assigning majority opinions is a quieter but important measure of institutional power. Opinion assignment usually belongs to the chief justice when the chief is in the majority; when the chief is in dissent, the assignment goes to the most senior justice in the majority. That rule has limited Thomas’ opportunities for much of his career. Before he became the most senior associate justice, he could assign only when Roberts was in dissent and every justice senior to Thomas was either also in dissent or no longer on the court. Even now, although Thomas is the most senior justice, he is often aligned with Roberts, which means the chief frequently retains the assignment power in the cases where Thomas is also in the majority.Thomas has assigned 22 majority opinions. His first assignment came in the 2009-10 term in Dolan v. United States, a statutory case concerning criminal restitution, where Breyer wrote for a majority joined by Thomas, Ginsburg, Alito, and Sotomayor, while Roberts dissented with Stevens, Scalia, and Kennedy. That lineup is a clean example of the assignment rule in operation: the chief was in dissent, and the justices senior to Thomas were also outside the majority, leaving Thomas as the senior justice in the majority. His most recent assignment came in the 2024 term in EPA v. Calumet, a venue case concerning the Clean Air Act, where Gorsuch and Roberts dissented.Across the assignments, Thomas has assigned seven opinions to Neil Gorsuch, six to himself, three to Elena Kagan, two each to Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Sonia Sotomayor. The pattern is revealing: Thomas has used assignment power not only for ideologically predictable conservative opinions, but also for cross-ideological majorities in which liberal justices such as Breyer, Ginsburg, Kagan, and Sotomayor wrote for the court. And he is relatively generous, keeping the opinion for himself in only six of these cases.Taken together, the data points in this profile show a justice whose influence cannot be captured by any single measure. Thomas is historically long-serving, unusually willing to write alone; central to major doctrinal shifts, especially in his promotion of originalism; and increasingly positioned to shape opinion assignments when the chief justice is not in the majority. But the assignment data also points to a broader theme of his tenure: Thomas’ power has often been indirect, accumulating over time through separate writings, clerk networks, coalition patterns, and the gradual movement of the court toward positions he advanced long before they commanded a majority.Read more