Justice Thomas Faces 2025 Exit With Harris Term Limits

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Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris said she supports term limits for Supreme Court justices, a policy that could force the retirement of conservative Justice Clarence Thomas in 2025, the Washington Examiner reported Monday.

Harris unveiled her slate of policy initiatives on Sunday — two days before the first presidential debate with Republican Donald Trump — that include “imposing term limits to address the crisis of confidence in the Supreme Court.”

While Harris did not release specifics about term length in “A New Way Forward,” she is “precisely aligned” with a 2023 Senate bill that would establish 18-year terms for Supreme Court justices, bill sponsor Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said last month.

With nearly 33 years on the High Court bench, Thomas would be the first forced out under the Harris-Whitehouse plan.

“They have not gone so far as to say, ‘We endorse your bill.’ They have said that your bills are precisely aligned with what we are talking about,” Whitehouse told Dispatch Politics on the final day of the Democratic National Convention, referring to Harris’ campaign about his term-limit legislation.

However, Whitehouse’s bill only gets passed if Democrats sweep November’s elections to capture the White House, Senate and House of Representatives, a longshot based on the Senate election landscape alone. Polling and election handicappers say Republicans hold at least a 51-49 margin in the Senate based on current leads in West Virginia and Montana.

Further, the Whitehouse bill would likely not survive the scrutiny of Article 3 of the Constitution, which says judges “shall hold their Offices during good Behavior.”

Regardless, under Whitehouse’s Senate Bill 3096, new justices would take the bench every two years, meaning Chief Justice John Roberts would be the next forced out in 2027; he has passed the 18-year threshold. If Harris went on to win a second term, conservative Justice Samuel Alito would be the next to go in 2029, according to the Examiner.

“Donald Trump is a threat to our fundamental rights and freedoms. He brags that he is ‘proudly’ responsible for handpicking Supreme Court Justices who overturned Roe, unleashing Trump Abortion Bans in states across the country, putting women’s lives at risk and threatening doctors and other health providers with jail time,” Harris writes on her policy page.