One News Misrepresents Supreme Court Justice
One News Tweeted Friday July 1st suggesting other supreme court rulings could be overturned in the wake of last weeks Dobbs v Jackson decision. In a short video One News presented a quote from Justice Clarence Thomas seemingly indicating he would like to see cases Griswald, Lawrence, and Obergefell overturned.
The sum of the One News quote:
“We should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.“
One News quoting Justice Clarence Thomas
Notice how they fail to include an ellipse indicating the omitted part of the sentence.
However, the One News writer who wrote this omitted the entire context of Justice Thomas’ reasoning. The writer started their quote six words short of the beginning of the sentence, the first 3 being “For that reason”. I guess the One News writer was too busy to read that reason one page earlier.
What Thomas actually said was cases that established the precedent “substantive due process” should be revisited as Thomas claims this precedent is an oxymoron that has no basis in the constitution. After the section quoted by One News, Thomas clarifies by stating:
“…we have a duty to “correct the error” established in those precedents…”
Justice Clarence Thomas United Stated Supreme Court 19-1392 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization p.119
So in the context of what Thomas was saying, he doesn’t intend to overturn those cases, but correct them in future cases brought before the court. Unless One News journalists are completely incompetent, this is a very good example of the media being deliberately misleading to direct readers to a pre-selected conclusion.
Source: 19-1392 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization