The vote by the Georgia state Senate in favor of erecting a statue of Justice Clarence Thomas in his home state marks another flash point in the career of the Supreme Court’s senior jurist. The bill provides for the “placement of a monument in honor of the Honorable Clarence Thomas within the capitol building or grounds.” It will now move to the state House of Representatives for further discussion. We hope it passes.

The tally in the senate was 32 to 30, along party lines, and sets up a state house showdown over whether the likeness of Pin Point’s most illustrious son will adorn the grounds of the Peach Tree State capitol or the honor will be blocked by a new version of the old hatred. The AP reports that one Democratic lawmaker, Emanuel Jones, called Justice Thomas an “Uncle Tom” who has “sold his soul to the slave master.” 

Another solon, Nan Orrock, is quoted by the AP as saying that  honoring the sage who is now the current Supreme Court’s longest-sitting justice “is problematic” and that there is a “cloud over his service.” Ms. Orrock could be suffering from scales over her eyes. As we’ve noted in these pages, Justice Thomas’s longest-lasting monument will be hewn from constitutional argument and the imprint of his personal example.

The “Uncle Tom” libel is particularly odious given Justice Thomas’s status as only the second Black justice to sit on the high court. He famously was born in a one-room shack without plumbing and with dirt floors. Justice Thomas is his own eloquent exegete on efforts to type him as a token rather than a trailblazer. He writes of this movingly in his memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son,” of the attempts to impose on him a worldview. 

“Merely because I was black, it seemed,” the justice writes, “I was supposed to listen to Hugh Masekela instead of Carole King, just as I was expected to be a radical, not a conservative. I no longer cared to play that game.” He decries being pursued by  “left-wing zealots draped in flowing sanctimony.” So deep does the opposition run to a statue of Justice Thomas that Democrats appear to have pulled an amendment erecting a statute of civil rights leader John Lewis.

The Democrats apparently feared that if they honor Lewis, the likeness of Justice Thomas would be built as well. Of what is it in Justice Thomas that they are so afraid? We are a newspaper, not a psychiatrist, but the hatred of Justice Thomas that infects the Democrats looks almost clinical. A statue of President Carter, a son of Plains, stands on the grounds of the Georgia Capitol. As one Republican put it, “we respect history,” even in disagreement.

The truth is that it’s way too late to deny Justice Thomas a monument. His is going to be one of the most towering ever for a United States judge — a lifetime of opinions, often a minority of one, by one of the most courageous justices ever to sit on the high bench. Long ago, he called the attempt by Chairman Joe Biden and other Democrats on the Judiciary Committee to deny him a seat on the court a “high-tech lynching.” 

He beat them at that game and for nigh three decades Justice Thomas has persisted. Once thought of as yesterday’s man, his jurisprudence these days feels flavored with the future. On issues from substantive due process to content moderation on the internet to defamation law to the constitutionality of affirmative action and gun rights, he looks set to lead the court, not follow it. “Isn’t it time,” he once asked, “to realize that being angry with me solves no problems?”