Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who owns stock in oil companies, may be violating court ethics rules by participating in certain cases that could benefit big oil companies, according to a government watchdog group.
In a letter Thursday, a coalition of watchdog groups urged the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate Alito, the only Supreme Court justice who owns stock in energy companies.
“His irregular denials in cases related to the oil and gas industry undermine public confidence in the impartiality of the courts,” said the letter, which was signed by green groups such as the League of Conservation Voters and the Center for Biological Diversity, as well as progressive accountability watchdogs the Revolving Door Project and True North Research.
The high court agreed in February to take up a lawsuit brought by oil majors Suncor Energy and Exxon, the first time the court has agreed to consider such a challenge. The companies asked the judge to confirm that federal law prevents local governments from suing oil and gas companies over the climate-warming effects of their products.
The court did not say which justices would support consideration of the petition. Alito did not recuse himself, the letter said.
“Judges in any court, including the high court, should not be allowed to hear cases in which they have a financial stake,” said Lisa Graves, a former senior Justice Department official who now heads True North Research.
In 2023, Alito recused himself from considering petitions filed by the same companies in the same case. The request had to be approved by four judges, but was denied.
The judge’s latest financial disclosures, filed last August and covering 2024, revealed individual stock holdings worth between $67,007 and $245,000 in ConocoPhillips, Phillips 66 and five other oil and energy companies. Mr. Alito also has invested up to $100,000 in the Vanguard fund, which is Exxon’s third-largest holding, the letter said.
“These judges alone should force Judge Alito to recuse himself from the state’s climate fraud case, which is running parallel to Boulder,” the groups said, referring to lawsuits filed by more than 70 state and local governments accusing oil companies of misleading the public about their role in the climate crisis.
It is unclear whether Alito sold: You have held shares in an oil and gas company since your last financial disclosure filing.
In January, a Supreme Court clerk notified parties in a lawsuit focused on the fossil fuel industry’s liability for damage to Louisiana’s coastline that Alito owns ConocoPhillips stock. The judge withdrew from the case days before oral arguments were to begin.
The Guardian has contacted the Supreme Court and Alito for comment.
Judges will be required to report on their holdings in 2026 next year. By then, the court may have already decided on the Suncor case, Graves said.
The group claims Alito has another “obvious conflict of interest”: his relationship with Republican billionaire donor Paul Singer. Mr. Singer founded and runs the hedge fund Elliott Investment Management. The company owns more than 52 million shares of Suncor, valued at more than $2.3 billion.
ProPublica reported in June 2023 that Alito did not publicly disclose that he took a private jet to Alaska on a 2008 fishing trip paid for by Singer. Mr. Alito defended the trip in the Wall Street Journal, saying that ethics rules do not require him to disclose that he took the trip and that he is not required to recuse himself from any lawsuit involving Mr. Singer that is covered in the press. He writes: “ProPublica is wrong to suggest that my failure to recuse myself in these cases created an unwarranted impression.”
“Mr. Alito’s decision to reverse course and participate in approving the companies’ latest petition is an indefensible violation of ethical boundaries, even though a favorable ruling in the companies’ favor could directly and indirectly benefit both himself and his billionaire friends,” a Thursday letter from the watchdog group said.
In 2023, the Supreme Court adopted its first-ever formal code of ethics in response to pressure from numerous scandals focusing on some senior right-wing judges. The law states that judges should recuse themselves from cases “where their impartiality may reasonably be called into question,” but allows them to make that decision themselves.
The code has been widely derided by experts as ineffective due to its lack of enforcement mechanisms. Unlike the standards for other federal judges, judges are also allowed to stay on a case if a vote is needed to resolve it.
“It’s possible that Mr. Alito is claiming that he is needed to resolve the issues in Suncor,” Graves said. “It’s really outrageous. The highest court in the land…should have the highest standards, not the lowest.”
This year, the court also introduced new software to scan challengers’ motions to identify potential conflicts of interest that may require judges to recuse themselves from the case. Parties in court will be required to list the stock symbols of the companies involved in the case so that new software can help identify disputes.
But the outcome of a climate change liability lawsuit targeting Big Oil could have implications for the entire industry, said Hannah Storey Brown, deputy director of research at the Revolving Door Project. That means judges should be disqualified from litigating cases if they own stock in an oil company, she said.
“Faced with parallel litigation like this, the consistently ethical option for Alito is an outright denial,” Brown said.
