Why Clarence Thomas broke his decade-long silence

Now with the floodgates truly opened, Justice Thomas, the only black member of the Supreme Court, pressed on, asking whether either of the defendants involved in Monday’s cases had used a weapon against a family member.

Thomas’ questions came in a minor case on domestic violence convictions and gun rights.

“Ms. Eisenstein, one question”, Thomas said suddenly, eliciting gasps from observers, according to the Associated Press. “Can you give me another area where a misdemeanor violation suspends a constitutional right?”.

[Thomas] wanted to know “how long” the suspension of Second Amendment rights was for people prohibited under federal law to possess firearms, and he pressed [assistant solicitor general Ilana] Eisenstein to name any other legal analog where the federal government could permanently curtail constitutional rights following a conviction for an unrelated offense.

The Hill suggests that these first questions “could signal that he intends to take a more prominent role on the court following [Justice Antonin] Scalia’s death”.

And in the case before the court yesterday, Thomas, true to form, spoke up to ask a pointed question that expresses skepticism about the Lautenberg measure. “It suspends a constitutional right”. Thomas was the only member of the court to speak at Scalia’s funeral Mass, reading from Scripture.

Under a federal law called the Lautenberg Amendment, if you’ve been convicted of a domestic violence misdemeanor, you can’t own or buy a gun. For example, regarding the First Amendment, Thomas said “Let’s say that a publisher is reckless about the use of children … in indecent displays”.

He said he developed the habit of keeping quiet to avoid ridicule for his Gullah creole dialect.

He has offered shifting reasons for his 10 years of silence.

Though Kimberly Robinson from Bloomberg tweeted that none of the other justices seemed surprised, Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick, who was also in the courtroom, told CNN that everyone in the gallery “leaned in in disbelief”.

“Thurgood Marshall rarely asked a question”.

But yesterday, the far-right jurist whose reticence has become the stuff of legend, had a question towards the end of an oral argument in a relatively obscure case.

■ The Supreme Court made a decision to stay out of a free speech debate about the power of school officials to discipline students for things they write or say away from school. The substance of any extended debate about pending cases is discussed among the justices and their clerks, and the outcome of every case is determined long before the two sides present their arguments to the court.