Senate

Senate Judiciary panel advances Supreme Court ethics reform bill

by Alexander Bolton - 07/20/23 1:03 PM ET

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted along party lines after a more-than-three-hour markup Thursday to advance a Supreme Court ethics reform bill in the wake of media reports that conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito accepted tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of gifts and perks from wealthy Republican donors.

The committee voted 11 to 10 to approve the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal and Transparency Act, which would require justices to adopt a code of conduct and create a transparent process for members of the public to submit ethics complaints against members of the court.

Every Democratic member of the committee voted for the reforms while every Republican voted no.

The bill would also require the Supreme Court to adopt disclosure rules for gifts, travel and income received by justices and law clerks that are as rigorous as Senate and House disclosure rules.

It would establish a panel of chief judges from the lower courts to investigate and make recommendations in response to complaints and require greater disclosure of funding behind amicus curiae briefs to the court.

Senate Republicans filed 61 amendments to the legislation to drag out the Judiciary Committee’s markup for several hours. The panel ended up voting on fewer than a dozen of them.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the ranking member of the panel, accused Democrats of trying to “destroy” the court in retaliation for recent landmark decisions by the court’s conservative majority to overturn the constitutional right to abortion, to reject the affirmative action policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina and invalidate President Biden’s student loan relief program.

“What you’re trying to do is not improve the court, you’re trying to destroy it as it exists,” he told his Democratic colleagues on the panel.

“You have to look at this in terms of what’s been going on for a couple years,” he said, pointing to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) warning to conservative Supreme Court justices in a rally held outside the court in March of 2020 that they would “pay the price” for ruling in favor of abortion restrictions.

Schumer later clarified that he never intended to suggest anything other than political and public opinion consequences for the Supreme Court if it restricted abortion rights.

Graham also accused Democrats of wanting to expand the Supreme Court to dilute the influence of conservative justices.

“You have done just about everything there is to do to delegitimize this court,” he said. “Members of the Democratic leadership went to the steps of the Supreme Court and literally threatened people.”

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) rejected that accusation.

“Some have suggested that Democrats are pursuing Supreme Court ethics reform to target the court’s current right-wing majority. Far from it. The reforms we are proposing would apply in equal force to all justices,” he said.

Durbin noted that he first urged Chief Justice John Roberts 11 years ago, when the composition of the court was much different, to adopt a binding code of conduct.

“Unfortunately, he did not accept my suggestion. Since then as more and more stories have emerged of justices’ ethical lapses, the American people’s confidence in the Supreme Court has dropped to an all-time low,” Durbin said.

ProPublica reported in April that Thomas accepted gifts of private plane travel and luxury vacations from Republican megadonor Harlan Crow over two decades without disclosing them publicly.

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The outlet also reported that Thomas didn’t disclose that one of Crow’s companies bought a property in Savannah, Ga., where Thomas’s mother lives and in which the justice owned a third interest.

Another ProPublica report revealed that Crow paid for the private school tuition for Thomas’s teenage grandnephew, whom Thomas said he was raising “as a son.”

ProPublica reported last month that Alito accepted a vacation at a luxury fishing lodge in Alaska in 2008 paid for by conservative donors and didn’t disclose it publicly.

Alito traveled to the lodge aboard a private jet owned by hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer and six years later ruled in a case, Republic of Argentina v. NML Capital, that resulted in Singer’s hedge fund recouping a $2.4 billion payout.

Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), a member of the panel, argued Thursday that Thomas’s wife, Ginni, a conservative activist, accepted payments from groups with business before the court that were not properly disclosed.

“How is it that you can have a Supreme Court justice who does not recuse himself when his wife is involved in the very issue that is before him?” she said. “Those kinds of examples really raise the question of why the Supreme Court shouldn’t have a code of ethics.”

More recently, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor came under criticism after The Associated Press reported that the her staff pushed colleges and a library to purchase copies of her book when she was scheduled to speak at their sponsored events.

Democrats voted along party lines to defeat Republican amendments to the bill, including one sponsored by Graham to empower the Supreme Court’s police force to investigate threats to justices and another by Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) to allow judges to carry guns for self-protection without restriction by state and local laws.

Durbin argued that the Department of Justice and FBI already has the job of investigating threats against justices and voiced concerns that expanding the mission of the Supreme Court’s relatively small police force would overtax it and require additional resources.

Durbin and other Democrats argued that Cornyn’s gun proposal wasn’t relevant to Supreme Court ethics reform. Cornyn argued that arming justices would protect them from potential attackers motivated by criticism of their decisions and ideology.

Democrats also defeated an amendment sponsored by Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) to delay the implementation of the Supreme Court ethics reform bill until Congress learns who leaked a draft of the court’s opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned the constitutional right to an abortion.

Durbin said Blackburn’s proposal wouldn’t do anything to address the “crisis of confidence” in the court.

The committee adopted an amendment sponsored by Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) to condemn denigrating rhetoric used against Thomas or any justice. Republicans who supported the amendment cited several examples of Democratic officials using such rhetoric to criticize Thomas.

—Updated at 4:50 p.m.