Justice Thomas asserts that the Brown v. Board of Education ruling resulted in discriminatory redistricting efforts.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas recently criticized the 70th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, citing its use of “extravagant uses of judicial power” in redrawing maps.

Brown v. Board ended racial segregation in the 1950s and 60s by prohibiting the segregation of school children by race.

In a concurring opinion for the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in Alexander v. South Carolina NAACP, Thomas critiqued the ruling that allowed South Carolina Republicans to redraw a congressional map that displaced 30,000 Black individuals from a district.

Following a ruling by a federal three-judge panel in January 2023 that the map was unlawfully using race to sort voters and intentionally dividing Black neighborhoods in Charleston County, the Supreme Court overturned the decision, stating that the South Carolina Legislature had focused on partisanship rather than race. Thomas, in his solo concurrence, suggested that the Supreme Court should eliminate any precedents restricting the political branches in redistricting matters.

Thomas argued that the Supreme Court’s perspective on equitable solutions only emerged in the 1950s due to resistance to the Brown ruling, resulting in extraordinary remedies. He proposed that the Court should overturn all precedents, including Brown, and return the responsibility of political districting to the political branches.

This report includes information from Reuters.