In 1992, an electrician named Robert Joiner sued Monsanto, the immense and powerful agrochemical corporation that had, for many years, manufactured the toxic chemical compounds polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. For more than a decade, Joiner had worked in a Georgia utilities plant, which used dielectric fluid containing PCBs as a coolant. As he tinkered with the machinery, the fluid splashed into his eyes and mouth; sometimes, he was forced to plunge his arms and hands directly into the fluid to make repairs. When Joiner fell ill with lung cancer, he took Monsanto (as well as General Electric) to court, arguing that his exposure to the chemicals had “promoted” his condition, and that Monsanto was therefore liable.
Five years later, the Supreme Court ruled against Joiner, siding with Monsanto’s formidable legal team in a decision that has been largely forgotten outside legal circles. These days, law schools teach it mostly to explain the legal standard for expert scientific testimony; journalists rarely mention the case at all. But it is notable for one unexplored reason—one of the justices who ruled for Monsanto not only had worked for the company as a young lawyer but had personally negotiated contracts to indemnify it from liability for harm resulting from PCB exposure: Clarence Thomas.
Ever since his controversial 1991 confirmation hearings, Thomas has been the subject of ravenous popular and scholarly interest. Today, there is a veritable shelf of books and studies analyzing his biography, his ideology, and his jurisprudence. Yet none of them linger on the almost three years he worked for Monsanto (it was his only private-sector experience) or the two subsequent years he spent advising Senator John Danforth—a Republican from Missouri—on environmental and energy issues.
To better understand Thomas’s environmental work, I viewed several folders of Monsanto’s highly restricted archival material in St. Louis. I then traveled to the State Historical Society of Missouri to view Danforth’s surviving office files. These 40-year-old pieces of papers—which I read shortly before the coronavirus pandemic shut down archives across the world—plainly documented the influence of Monsanto and other polluting industries in shaping the young Thomas’s thinking. When viewed alongside other archival material (including some records Monsanto was forced to disclose in litigation), the documents demonstrate how Thomas adopted the chemical industry’s fierce opposition to government scrutiny in his subsequent legislative work and judging. As a justice, Thomas has displayed a profound reverence for untrammeled private enterprise and a deep skepticism of the administrative state. In short, he judges like the chemical industry attorney he once was.