Joe Biden and Clarence Thomas have been tied together in American political life since 1991, when Biden, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, presided over Thomas’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Those hearings became a national fight over sexual harassment, race, and judicial philosophy after law professor Anita Hill accused Thomas of workplace misconduct. Thomas was confirmed 52 to 48, the narrowest margin in more than a century, with Biden voting no. The consequences shaped both men for the next three decades: Biden’s later legislation on violence against women, his 2020 campaign, his judicial appointments as president, and his push to reform a Supreme Court where Thomas still sits.
The 1991 Confirmation Hearings
President George H.W. Bush nominated Thomas, then 43, to replace the retiring Justice Thurgood Marshall. Hearings opened on September 10, 1991, in the Russell Senate Office Building, with Biden presiding over a 14-member committee of all men.1GovInfo. Confirmation Hearings for Judge Clarence Thomas, Part 1 Biden called the proceedings the committee’s “most serious obligation” and promised they would be “open and fair.”
Biden’s opening line of questioning centered on Thomas’s stated interest in “natural law,” which Biden framed as a possible vehicle for rolling back reproductive rights and invalidating economic regulations like the minimum wage.1GovInfo. Confirmation Hearings for Judge Clarence Thomas, Part 1 Thomas largely deflected. He called his earlier writings the “musings of a ‘part-time political theorist'” and told Biden, “I don’t think you can use natural law as a basis for constitutional adjudication.” On abortion, he acknowledged a 14th Amendment right to privacy but refused to comment on Roe v. Wade.2Los Angeles Times. Thomas Distances Himself From Past Writings on Natural Law Biden said the responses “raised more questions than they answered.”
Anita Hill and the Witnesses Biden Did Not Call
Days before the scheduled Senate vote, allegations from Anita Hill, a law professor and former subordinate of Thomas at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, leaked to the press. Hill accused Thomas of unwanted sexual advances, workplace discussions of sex, and descriptions of pornography while he supervised her at the EEOC.3The Hill. A History of the Joe Biden-Anita Hill Controversy Thomas denied all of it.
Biden reopened hearings from October 11 to 13, 1991.4History.com. Joseph Biden on the Thomas-Hill Sexual Harassment Hearings He asked Hill to recount “the most embarrassing of all the incidents” she alleged, a moment later criticized as invasive.5TIME. Joe Biden and Anita Hill Thomas answered with a line that defined the hearings: “From my standpoint as a black American, as far as I’m concerned, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves.”6American Rhetoric. Clarence Thomas High-Tech Lynching Statement He called the proceedings a “circus” and a “national disgrace.”
The most enduring criticism of Biden’s chairmanship concerns three women he did not put on the stand: Angela Wright, Rose Jourdain, and Sukari Hardnett, all former EEOC employees. Wright alleged that Thomas “consistently pressured” her to date him and commented on her body, including her breast size, and had come to her apartment “unannounced and uninvited.” Jourdain corroborated Wright. Hardnett submitted a written statement alleging that young Black women working for Thomas “knew full well you were being inspected and auditioned as a female.”7New York Magazine. The Forgotten Testimonies Against Clarence Thomas
Wright was under subpoena and waited in Washington for three days. Biden’s staff sent her a letter saying that “because of the lateness of the hour,” her statement would simply be entered into the record.8PBS Frontline. Angela Wright Interview Cynthia Hogan, Biden’s committee counsel, later called that a “political miscalculation” and “bad advice.”9Washington Post. Joe Biden Was in Charge of the Anita Hill Hearing Biden himself once acknowledged that “calling those witnesses might have killed Thomas’ nomination.”10Politico. Biden, Anita Hill, and the Clarence Thomas Hearings The New Yorker later wrote that the three women’s testimony “might very well have changed the outcome of the final vote.”11The New Yorker. What Joe Biden Hasn’t Owned Up to About Anita Hill
Other procedural choices drew fire. Biden let Thomas testify both before and after Hill.3The Hill. A History of the Joe Biden-Anita Hill Controversy He limited the inquiry to workplace behavior, excluding testimony about Thomas’s alleged habit of watching and discussing pornographic films.11The New Yorker. What Joe Biden Hasn’t Owned Up to About Anita Hill Senator Howard Metzenbaum, a Democrat on the panel, said “Joe bent over too far backwards to accommodate the Republicans.” The investigative book Strange Justice by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson called Biden a “benign villain,” fundamentally decent but “flawed by a desire for popularity and a weakness when faced with confrontation.”12Los Angeles Times. Review of Strange Justice and Resurrection Biden defended himself by pointing to committee rules and his obligation to act as a “neutral arbiter.”
The Vote
The Senate confirmed Thomas on October 15, 1991, 52 to 48. Biden voted no.13U.S. Senate. Roll Call Vote on the Nomination of Clarence Thomas
How Thomas Sees Biden
Thomas has treated the process as an attempt to destroy him, and he has said so on the record. In the 2020 documentary Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words, drawn from more than 22 hours of interviews conducted in 2018, he addressed Biden’s questioning directly: “I have no idea what he was talking about. I understood what he was trying to do. I didn’t really appreciate it. Natural law was nothing more than a way of tricking me into talking about abortion.”14ABC News. Justice Clarence Thomas Rebukes Biden-Led Confirmation Hearings
He framed the broader opposition in racial terms: “People should just tell the truth: ‘This is the wrong black guy; he has to be destroyed.'” He said “the biggest impediment was the modern day liberal” and that most senators on the committee “cared about only one thing: how would I rule on abortion rights.”15TIME. Inside the Clarence Thomas Documentary The Biden campaign responded by noting that Biden had voted against Thomas in committee, argued against him on the Senate floor, and voted against confirmation. “It is no surprise that Justice Thomas does not have a positive view of him,” a spokesman said.14ABC News. Justice Clarence Thomas Rebukes Biden-Led Confirmation Hearings
Biden’s Regret and the 2020 Campaign
For nearly three decades, Hill said Biden had never apologized to her. Shortly before he launched his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden reached her through an intermediary and spoke with her by phone. His campaign said he “shared with her directly his regret for what she endured.”16CNN. Biden and Hill Spoke Before Campaign Launch Hill declined to call it an apology. “I cannot be satisfied by simply saying, ‘I’m sorry for what happened to you,'” she told the New York Times. She also connected Biden’s handling of the 1991 hearings to the later confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, saying Biden had “set the stage” for it.17New York Times. Joe Biden Called Anita Hill
On the first day of his campaign, April 25, 2019, Hill’s name trended on social media. The next day on ABC’s The View, Biden said, “I’m sorry for the way she got treated,” but added, “I don’t think I treated her badly,” citing committee rules. Pressed further, he said: “Look, there are a lot of mistakes made across the board, and for those I apologize.”18NPR. Biden Insists He Didn’t Treat Anita Hill Badly Hill later said she did not view Biden’s handling of the hearings as “disqualifying” and could conceive of voting for him, and she rejected any comparison between Biden and Donald Trump on sexual misconduct.19NBC News. Anita Hill Says She’d Be Open to Supporting Biden
The Violence Against Women Act
Biden’s legislative answer to the culture the hearings exposed was the Violence Against Women Act. He began drafting it in 1990 and shepherded it to passage in 1994 as part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. VAWA was the first comprehensive federal law to treat domestic violence and sexual assault as crimes warranting a coordinated national response, funding shelters, advocate training, research, and legal assistance for victims.20Legal Momentum. History of VAWA One analysis described the law as “the product of the infamous Anita Hill hearings and the subsequent ‘Year of the Woman’ in the early 1990s.”21Network for Public Health Law. Reauthorizing the Federal Violence Against Women Act Biden also pushed for women to join the Judiciary Committee, saying he campaigned for female senators on the condition they serve on the panel so “there would never be again all men making a judgment on this.”3The Hill. A History of the Joe Biden-Anita Hill Controversy
President Biden, Justice Thomas, and Court Reform
As president, Biden secured the confirmation of 235 life-tenured federal judges in a single term, the highest total since Jimmy Carter. Among them was Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman on the Supreme Court. More than 60 percent of Biden’s judicial appointees were women, and 37 percent were women of color.22The White House. Fact Sheet: President Biden Secures Confirmation of 235th Federal Judge23The 19th. Biden’s Record on Diverse Federal Judges
Beginning in 2023, ProPublica reported that Thomas had for more than two decades accepted undisclosed luxury travel from Republican donor Harlan Crow, including trips on Crow’s private jet and superyacht. ProPublica estimated the 2019 Indonesia trip alone could have exceeded $500,000.24ProPublica. Clarence Thomas and the Billionaire The Senate Judiciary Committee later reported that Thomas had accepted nearly $4.2 million in gifts over two decades, about ten times the value received by his fellow justices combined during that period.25Senate Judiciary Committee. Durbin Reveals Omissions of Gifted Private Travel to Justice Thomas Thomas defended the trips as “hospitality” from a friend. Democratic lawmakers separately called on him to recuse from cases connected to the 2020 election and January 6, citing his wife Virginia “Ginni” Thomas’s role in the “Stop the Steal” movement and her texts to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Thomas did not recuse from most of those cases.26ABC News. Calls for Thomas to Recuse in 14th Amendment Case
This was the backdrop for Biden’s Court reform push. In April 2021, he established a 34-member Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court, which in December 2021 approved a 288-page report finding “considerable, bipartisan support” for 18-year term limits but “profound disagreement” over Court expansion.27SCOTUSblog. Presidential Court Commission Approves Final Report On July 29, 2024, Biden proposed three concrete reforms: 18-year term limits for justices, a binding code of conduct requiring gift disclosure and recusal for conflicts, and a constitutional amendment ending presidential immunity for crimes in office. Biden called the Court’s existing code “weak and self-enforced.”28The American Presidency Project. My Plan to Reform the Supreme Court None of the proposals advanced in Congress.29SCOTUSblog. Biden Proposes Supreme Court Reforms
Where Thomas Stands Now
As of mid-2026, Thomas remains on the Supreme Court at age 77. He is the longest-serving current justice and, having surpassed John Paul Stevens’s tenure in May 2026, the second-longest-serving justice in American history. He has given no sign of retiring, and President Trump has publicly said he hopes Thomas stays. Thomas authored the 2022 ruling expanding Second Amendment rights and joined the majority overturning Roe v. Wade. In February 2026, he was among three conservatives who dissented when the Court rejected President Trump’s global tariffs. In April 2026 at the University of Texas, he called “progressivism” an “existential threat” to the country and its founding principles.30Mass Lawyers Weekly. Clarence Thomas Second-Longest-Serving U.S. Supreme Court Justice According to Strange Justice, Thomas told friends after his confirmation that he planned to remain on the Court for 43 years, “because it would take that long to get even.”12Los Angeles Times. Review of Strange Justice and Resurrection