Judge Clarence Thomas and his wife Ginni had already come under fire for failing to disclose that for two decades they accepted luxury trips from a GOP donor..

The case revealed this Thursday by the Post concerns a judicial activist, Leonard Leo, who at the time of the payments was a consultant for a conservative NGO.

The organization filed a brief with the Supreme Court in 2012 in support of Shelby County, Alabama, then embroiled in a case over the constitutionality of an aspect of the Civil Rights Act that required some districts with historical discrimination issues to receive support. from the Department of Justice before making changes to the voting laws.

The Supreme Court then ruled in favor of Alabama and struck down that aspect of the Civil Rights Act. Justice Thomas was one of five justices who supported the ruling.

For its Thursday exclusive, the Post interviewed several legal experts who offered differing interpretations of whether the payments to Ginni Thomas around the time the case was decided constituted a conflict of interest, which would have forced the judge to recuse himself. .

While some of the experts agreed that the payments should have prevented Thomas from participating in the case, others considered that the amount of money was not enough to constitute a conflict of interest.

In all, documents seen by the newspaper show an amount of $100,000 for Ginni Thomas between 2011 and 2012.

According to Leo himself, the payments, which were made through the NGO for which he was a consultant and which submitted the report favorable to Alabama, were for work that Thomas’s wife did for a survey firm.

In them, the activist explicitly asked that the name of Ginni Thomas not appear, something that, according to The Washington Post, was simply intended to protect her privacy and that of her husband.