Citizens United Watch: Justice Thomas’s Wife Forms Conservative Lobbying Group Which Will Take Corporate Funds

The Los Angeles Times reports that Virginia Thomas, wife of United States Supreme court Justice Clarence Thomas, has formed a new lobbying group called Liberty Central Inc., which will accept donations from corporations, as permitted under the new corporate speech regime announced in Citizens United v. FEC. (For background, read our earlier post, “Citizens United: Eight Unanswered Questions.”)

The Times speaks to a number of legal ethics experts, who agree that there’s no precedent for addressing potential ethical conflicts raised by a Supreme Court justice with a lobbyist spouse. They note, however, that Thomas’s affiliation with the group might require Justice Thomas to recuse himself from certain cases in the future.

One fact stands out in particular to this reader: the Times says the organization was launched in January 2010, and Ms. Thomas’s bio on the Liberty Central website refers to her as a “new social entrepreneur.” The Citizens United opinion came down on January 21st, 2010. Thus, Liberty Central was either founded immediately before Justice Thomas’s vote in the Citizens United case, or immediately after.

The proximity of Liberty Central’s founding to the release of the Citizens United decision raises a number of questions. Was Liberty Central in the works regardless of the Court’s decision? Did it merely state an intent to receive corporate funds as an afterthought, or does it expect to receive a significant portion of its funds from corporations? Was Virginia Thomas simply well-aware of what many observers suspected — that the Court would remove many restraints on corporate speech — allowing her to begin planning in advance of the Court’s ruling, or was she privy to particular information about the Court’s progress in its deliberations? At which point did she indicate to her husband her intent to find new employment with an organization which would benefit from the Court’s ruling?

The real story here may simply be that studying the means by which Liberty Central intends to operate will allow observers to better predict the practical effects of the Citizens United decision. LibertyCentral.org appears to be a social networking site, with an approach similar to my.barackobama.com, providing an organizing platform for “new citizen activists,” by which they apparently mean grassroots conservative activists of the Tea Party ilk (the site contains an endorsement from an organization called the Tea Party Patriots). Its website states that Liberty Central will provide access to “directories of funding sources, tools and vendors for conservative activists.” Thus, Liberty Central itself may reap revenue from connecting grassroots activists with corporate funds — a process better known as astroturfing. Will Citizens United provide the wherewithal for an astroturfing explosion in the 2010 Congressional races?