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In 1990, President George H. W. Bush nominated Thomas for a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Thomas served in that role for 16 months, and on July 1, 1991, he was nominated by Bush to fill Marshall's seat on the Court. Thomas's confirmation hearings were controversial for their time, centering on an accusation that he had sexually harassed attorney Anita Hill, a subordinate at the Department of Education and at the EEOC.
President Bush had first considered nominating Thomas for the court a year earlier when Justice William Brennan retired. Thomas was one of five candidates on Bush's shortlist and was Bush's first choice. Bush's staff convinced the President to delay the appointment for three reasons: 1. Thomas had only been a judge for eight months at the time; 2. Thurgood Marshall was expected to retire in the near future; and 3. many people did not feel that Thomas was ready. Bush decided to nominate Judge David Souter of the First Circuit instead, who was easily confirmed.
On a Sunday morning talk show, Bush's Chief of Staff John H. Sununu promised that Bush would fill the next Supreme Court vacancy with a "true conservative" and he said that he expected that there would be a "knock-down, drag-out, bloody-knuckles, grass-roots fight" over confirmation. On July 1, 1991, President Bush nominated Thomas to replace Marshall, who had recently announced his retirement. By this time Thomas had been a federal judge for 16 months. He had never argued before the Court, though he was not unique in that regard. Marshall had been the first African American Justice on the Court, and the appointment of Thomas was justified in part to preserve the existing racial composition of the Court.
Attorney General Richard Thornburgh warned Bush that replacing Thurgood Marshall, who was widely revered as a civil rights icon, with any candidate who was not perceived to match Marshall's views on civil rights would make the confirmation process difficult. Initially, civil rights and feminist organizations opposed Thomas' appointment, in part because of Thomas's criticism of affirmative action and because they believed that Thomas might overturn Roe v. Wade.
By this point in history, Supreme Court nominees were customarily evaluated by a committee of the American Bar Association (ABA) before being the nominee was considered by the Senate Judiciary Committee. The White House and Republican Senators lobbied the ABA for a better rating for Thomas, while attempting to discredit the ABA as partisan. On a scale of well-qualified, qualified, or unqualified, 12 members of the Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary voted that he was "qualified", one abstained, and the other two voted "not qualified". This was one of the lowest levels of support for Supreme Court nominees ever given by the ABA.
As the nomination hearings approached, Thomas's opponents began to organize their opposition to his nomination. African-American activist attorney Florynce Kennedy said of Thomas at a July 1991 conference of the National Organization for Women in New York City, referring to the failure of Ronald Reagan's nomination of Robert Bork, "We're going to 'bork' him."
At the beginning of the proceedings, Thomas was questioned on his judicial philosophy, including a suggestion by Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Joe Biden implying that Thomas was a libertarian. But it was near the end of the first round of the hearings when they took a dramatic twist. NPR's Supreme Court correspondent Nina Totenberg received a Judiciary Committee/FBI report that was leaked to her, which suggested that a former colleague of Thomas, University of Oklahoma law school professor Anita Hill, had accused Thomas of making unwelcome sexual comments to her when the two worked together at the Department of Education and EEOC. In the same FBI report, Thomas testified that he had once promoted Allyson Duncan over Hill as his chief of staff at the EEOC and that he believed that Hill had a lasting resentment over this.
On October 11, 1991, Anita Hill was called as a witness to testify during the hearing. She said in her opening statement that she was testifying as to the character and fitness of Thomas to serve on the court. She said that in 1981, Hill had become an attorney-adviser to Clarence Thomas at the United States Department of Education. When Thomas became Chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in 1982, Hill went with Thomas to serve as his special assistant, but quit the job in mid-1983. Hill alleged in her 1991 testimony that it was during her employment at ED and EEOC that Thomas made sexually provocative statements. When she was asked why she had followed Thomas to work with him at the EEOC, when she knew what kind of person he was, she said it was because "the work itself was interesting, and at that time, it appeared that the sexual overtures had ended." She said that she wanted to work in the civil rights field.
Hill alleged salacious details about her time with Thomas at the Department of Education. She said in her testimony: "He spoke about acts that he had seen in pornographic films involving such matters as women having sex with animals and films showing group sex or rape scenes. On several occasions, Thomas told me graphically of his own sexual prowess." She described an incident which she said occurred later after they had both began their new jobs at the EEOC: "Thomas was drinking a Coke in his office, he got up from the table at which we were working, went over to his desk to get the Coke, looked at the can and asked, 'Who has put pubic hair on my Coke?'"
Two other women, Angela Wright and Rose Jourdain, made statements to Senate staffers in support of Hill. For some unclear reason however, Wright and Jourdain were not called as witnesses by the Judiciary Committee without testifying. Democratic Senators were concerned about Wright's credibility and Wright herself was reluctant to testify after seeing the Committee's treatment of Hill. Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter had accused Hill of perjury. Wright and Hill were the only people who publicly alleged that then-Judge Thomas had made unsolicited sexual advances, and Hill was the only one who testified to that effect.
Wright had been a subordinate of Thomas at the EEOC, but was fired by him. She told Senate Judiciary Committee staff that Thomas had repeatedly made suggestive comments to her and had pressured her for dates. She alleged that he had asked her about the size of her breasts, and frequently commented on the anatomy of other women. Wright said that after she turned down Thomas for a date, Thomas began to express discontent with her work and eventually fired her. Thomas said that he fired Wright for poor performance and for using a homophobic epithet.
Another former Thomas assistant, Sukari Hardnett, did not allege any sexual harassment, but told the Judiciary Committee staff: "if you were young, black, female, reasonably attractive and worked directly for Clarence Thomas, you knew full well you were being inspected and auditioned as a female."
Thomas testified that the accusations against him were false. He said:
"I deny each and every single allegation against me today that suggested in any way that I had conversations of a sexual nature or about pornographic material with Anita Hill, that I ever attempted to date her, that I ever had any personal sexual interest in her, or that I in any way ever harassed her. This is a case in which this sleaze, this dirt, was searched for by staffers of members of this committee. It was then leaked to the media. And this committee and this body validated it and displayed it in prime time over our entire nation.This is not an opportunity to talk about difficult matters privately or in a closed environment. This is a circus. It's a national disgrace. And from my standpoint, as a black American, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate rather than hung from a tree."
Under questioning from Sen. Biden, Hill had sad that Thomas had discussed a porn star by the name of Long Dong Silver in her presence and had also referred to a pubic hair on a Coke can. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) asked Justice Thomas his response to those claims. Thomas firmly denied having said either.
Several witnesses testified in support of Clarence Thomas and rebutted Hill's testimony. Phone logs were also submitted into the record showing contact between Hill and Thomas in the years after she left the EEOC. J.C. Alvarez, a woman who for four years was Thomas' special assistant at EEOC, said that "the Anita Hill I knew before was nobody's victim." She said that Thomas "demanded professionalism and performance" and would not tolerate "the slightest hint of impropriety, and everyone knew it." She also questioned Hill’s credibility, telling the Senators, “Women who have really been harassed would agree, if the allegations were true, you put as much distance as you can between yourself and that other person. What's more, you don't follow them to the next job—especially, if you are a black female, Yale Law School graduate. Let's face it, out in the corporate sector, companies are fighting for women with those kinds of credentials.”
Another witness who testified on behalf of Thomas was Nancy Fitch, a special assistant historian to Thomas at EEOC. She said, "I know he did no such thing." Diane Holt, Thomas' personal secretary for six years, said that, "At no time did Professor Hill intimate, not even in the most subtle of ways, that Judge Thomas was asking her out or subjecting her to the crude, abusive conversations that have been described. Nor did I ever discern any discomfort, when Professor Hill was in Judge Thomas' presence." Phyllis Berry-Myers, another special assistant to Thomas, described the nominee as "respectful, demanding of excellence in our work, cordial, professional, interested in our lives and our career ambitions". She also said that it was her impression was that Professor Hill wanted a greater relationship with Judge Thomas than "just a professional one". Nancy Altman who worked with Hill and Thomas at the Department of Education testified that, "It is not credible that Clarence Thomas could have engaged in the kinds of behavior that Anita Hill alleges, without any of the women who he worked closest with—dozens of us, we could spend days having women come up, his secretaries, his chief of staff, his other assistants, his colleagues—without any of us having sensed, seen or heard something."
In 1991, public opinion polls showed that a significant majority of those polled believed Thomas over Hill. Some reporters predicted that other women who were allegedly harassed by Thomas would soon be coming forward, but no others ever did in the years that followed.
After extensive debate, the Committee sent the nomination to the full Senate without a recommendation either way. Thomas was confirmed by the Senate with a 52 to 48 vote on October 15, 1991. Vice President Dan Quayle presided over the vote in his role as President of the Senate, in case his vote was needed to break a potential 50-50 tie for confirmation. 41 Republicans and 11 Democrats voted to confirm Thomas while 46 Democrats and 2 Republicans voted to reject the nomination. Ironically one of the Republicans voting against Thomas was Senator Bob Packwood of Oregon, who himself would later face sexual harassment allegations which ended his Senate career.
Thomas was sworn in on October 23, 1991, by Justice Byron White as the 106th Justice of the Supreme Court. Chief Justice William Rehnquist would normally have sworn Thomas in at a ceremony initially scheduled for October 21, but this was postponed until October 23 due to the death of Rehnquist’s wife.
Thomas's wife Virginia told ABC news "I think [Hill] owes us an apology for not telling the truth and infecting his life story and I look forward to receiving that phone call or that visit one day." On October 9, 2010, she left a voicemail message for Hill. In the voicemail, Thomas said that Hill should apologize to Thomas's husband. Hill responded that she believed there was nothing to apologize for and said that her 1991 testimony was truthful.