Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas skipped work on Monday, with NBC News reporting that the 75 year old arch-conservative jurist is missing arguments in Snyder v United States, a question of whether 18 USC § 666 “criminalizes gratuities, ie, payments in recognition of actions the official has already taken or committed to take” and Chiaverini v Napoleon, Ohio, a question of whether “Fourth Amendment malicious prosecution claims are governed by the charge-specific rule, as the Second, Third, and Eleventh circuits hold, or by the ‘any-crime’ rule, as the Sixth Circuit holds.”
Weird how he’d miss the first one, seeing as how he might have some kind of interest in whether it’s okay for certain public officials to accept gifts under certain circumstances. No reason was given for the absence, and NBC notes that in February 2023, the last time one of them was out, Chief Justice John Roberts announced that Justice Neil Gorsuch was feeling “under the weather.”
Maybe Clarence’s RV has a flat and he’s stuck on the side of I-95 somewhere in South Carolina, yelling over the phone at Harlan Crow to call AAA with a different credit card than the first one.