Clarence Thomas - Personal Life

Personal Life

In 1971, Thomas married college sweetheart Kathy Grace Ambush. They had one child, Jamal Adeen. In 1981 they separated and in 1984 divorced. In 1987, Thomas married Virginia Lamp, a lobbyist and aide to Republican Congressman Dick Armey. In 1997, they took in Thomas's then six-year-old great nephew, Mark Martin, Jr., who had lived with his mother in Savannah public housing.

Thomas's wife remained active in conservative politics, serving as a consultant to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and as founder and president of Liberty Central, an advocacy group associated with the Tea Party movement. As of 2011, Thomas's wife stepped down from Liberty Central to open a conservative lobbying firm touting her "experience and connections", meeting with newly elected Republican congressmen, and describing herself as an "ambassador to the tea party".

Thomas was reconciled to the Catholic Church in the mid-1990s. He remains a practicing Catholic. In his 2007 autobiography, he criticized the Church for its failure to grapple with racism in the 1960s during the Civil Rights Movement, saying it was not as "adamant about ending racism then as it is about ending abortion now". Thomas is one of thirteen Catholic justices—out of 112 justices total—in the history of the Supreme Court, and one of six currently on the Court.

Thomas has a reputation as an affable, good-humored man who is extremely personally popular with his friends and colleagues. According to writer Jeffrey Toobin, "Fellow justices, law clerks, police officers, cafeteria workers, janitors – all basked in Thomas's effusive good nature. His rolling basso laughter frequently pierced the silence of the Court's hushed corridors." He is particularly close to fellow justice (and ideological opponent) Stephen Breyer, and the two are frequently seen at the Court's oral arguments whispering, laughing, and passing notes.

In January 2011, the liberal advocacy group Common Cause reported that between 2003 and 2007 Thomas failed to disclose $686,589 in income earned by his wife from the Heritage Foundation, instead reporting "none" where "spousal noninvestment income" would be reported on his Supreme Court financial disclosure forms. The following week, Thomas stated that the disclosure of his wife's income had been "inadvertently omitted due to a misunderstanding of the filing instructions". Thomas amended reports going back to 1989.