Clarence Thomas takes aim at 'judicial power' in landmark Brown v Board of Education decision

Justice Clarence Thomas, in the court's latest decision upholding a GOP-drawn redistricting map in South Carolina, took aim at a key, decades-old civil rights decision, calling it an "extravagant [use] of judicial power."

On Thursday, the Supreme Court sided with the Republican-led South Carolina legislature after it was challenged for alleged racial gerrymandering in drawing new redistricting maps.

In a 6-3 decision, written by Justice Samuel Alito, the high court said that "a party challenging a map’s constitutionality must disentangle race and politics if it wishes to prove that the legislature was motivated by race as opposed to partisanship. Second, in assessing a legislature’s work, we start with a presumption that the legislature acted in good faith."

In a concurring opinion, Justice Thomas wrote that the 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education – written by his predecessor, Justice Thurgood Marshall – introduced an "extravagant [use] of judicial power."

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The Brown decision said that separating children in public schools on the basis of race was unconstitutional, and overruled the "separate but equal" legal doctrine.

Thomas, who grew up in the segregated South, has repeatedly stated that the Constitution prohibits race-based discrimination, regardless of the intent, and its devastating effects.

In the case last year banning affirmative action in college admissions, Thomas wrote a concurrence "to offer an originalist defense of the colorblind Constitution" and to "clarify that all forms of discrimination based on race — including so-called affirmative action — are prohibited under the Constitution; and to