President-elect Donald Trump could persuade U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to retire in an effort to cement the conservative supermajority on the court, lawyer David Lat said.
After Trump won the election over Vice President Kamala Harris in what has been dubbed the greatest political comeback in U.S. history this week, many are looking at what this might mean for America.
Lat, who describes himself as a "lawyer-turned-legal journalist," has written about how he thinks Trump's second term could impact the Supreme Court.
He does not believe that Trump will make the court more conservative as, "it would be hard to outflank Justice Thomas and [Justice Samuel] Alito on the right," but he may want to "dramatically increase the likelihood of the conservative supermajority enduring for another generation," Lat wrote in his Substack Original Jurisdiction.
Trump may try to do this by convincing Thomas, 76, to retire during his next presidential term. Thomas is close to the average Supreme Court justice retirement age (75 and older) and Trump would want to replace him with an "ultra-conservative pick" while he has a majority in the Senate.
"With Republicans holding somewhere between 52 to 54 seats in the Senate, Trump will have ample leeway in selecting a nominee," Lat wrote.
"So, if Justices Thomas and Alito retire during the first two years of Trump's term, when he'll have a favorable Senate, Trump would be able to replace them with successors who are just as conservative—but decades younger."
Lat thinks getting Thomas to retire would be more difficult than 74-year-old Alito, whom lawyer and political commentator Ed Wheelan has already predicted will retire in the spring of 2026 in his recent piece for the National Review.
"Justice Thomas is trickier," Lat wrote, arguing that, among other reasons, Thomas would have no reason to want to leave as he is "arguably more influential than he has ever been."
On top of that, Thomas may want to surpass Justice William O. Douglas as the longest-serving justice.
"But he might be persuadable," Lat wrote, "especially if the Trump administration implies [or promises] that they'll replace him with one of his former clerks who would carry on his legacy, like Judge James Ho or Judge Kathryn Mizelle."
Newsweek has contacted the Supreme Court's Public Information Office and Trump's team via email for comment.
Lat's argument includes the fact that the only three liberal justices on the court—Sonia Sotomayor, 70, Elena Kagan, 64, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, 54, are too far from retirement age for Trump to rely on replacing one of them with a conservative.
The current conservative supermajority on the court was secured during Trump's first term, when he appointed Justices Neil Gorsuch, 57, Brett Kavanaugh, 59, and Amy Coney Barrett, 52, resulting in the 6-3 decision to overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022.
The court was marred with controversy at the end of last year and the beginning of this one, with Thomas named in a 2023 ProPublica report for failing to disclose gifts and trips from Republican megadonor Harlan Crow.
Thomas is the longest-serving member of the current court, having received a lifetime appointment in 1991 after being nominated to the bench by President George H.W. Bush.
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