Clarence Thomas Film Inexplicably Removed From Amazon Prime — And the Online Retailer Has Sold Out of the DVD

MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images.

A documentary about the life of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has been dropped from the Amazon Prime streaming service, and the online retailer says it is “temporarily out of stock” of the DVD.

The film, Created Equal: Clarence Thomas In His Own Words, draws from hours of interviews with Thomas himself, covering everything from his childhood in segregated Georgia, his legal education at Yale Law School, controversial Supreme Court confirmation hearings, and eventual confirmation as the second African-American to serve on the nation’s highest court.

Created Equal first aired on PBS in May 2020, and then was available on Amazon Prime last October. The film’s director, Michael Pack, told the Wall Street Journal that Amazon removed the film from their streaming service on Feb. 8, but declined to give any explanation.

“Our distributor, who’s the one who made the deal with Amazon, has repeatedly asked them for explanations but they haven’t given any,” said Pack. “They have the right to pull anything from their site, and they don’t have to give an explanation. So it’s not a contract violation. But many people have complained, and they haven’t put it back up.”

Pack also noted that the film had done well, briefly ranking number one in Amazon’s documentary category, and performing better than other documentaries about Anita Hill and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (both of which remain on Amazon Prime). The timing of the film’s removal during Black History Month was especially troublesome to Pack.

Multiple conservative media outlets decried Amazon’s decision as anti-conservative bias and censorship. In addition to the Wall Street Journal, Fox News and The Federalist weighed in as well.

The controversy may have resulted in a spike in sales of the DVD of the film. The Amazon listing says that the title is “Temporarily out of stock” or, if you’re logged into your Amazon account, “Currently Unavailable” with a message inviting shoppers to submit their email address to be notified when the inventory is restocked.

Screenshot via Amazon.com dated March 4, 2021.

A similar phenomenon is occurring with several books by Dr. Seuss, after the trust that manages his estate announced they were removing six books from print due to outdated and racist imagery. The affected titles saw a spike in sales on sites like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and eBay.