A Non-Exhaustive List of Supreme Court Justice Scandals Since 1991

The Supreme Court’s popularity is in the toilet. For months now, public support for the increasingly polarized institution has been tanking—likely hastened by its unprecedented ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade, the first time the court’s ever revoked a right it’d previously granted—and, for the first time, a majority of Americans want to see the court expanded. Yet, in the face of these stats, many of the justices don’t seem chastened at all!

All those polls were conducted before the rash of recent reporting that’s uncovered various ethics scandals involving Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and John Roberts and their alleged financial conflicts of interest. The investigations underscored the fact that it’s the justices’ call on whether they recuse themselves from certain cases, and there’s no way to appeal a failure to recuse. Even Sen. Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D.Ill)—with whom I have beef—has come out swinging, saying that “the highest court in the land shouldn’t have the lowest standard of ethics in the federal government.” (That’s good stuff, Senator, now issue some subpoenas.)

So why are lawmakers and advocates talking about court reform? Well, it goes back years with some of these folks. Let’s roll the tapes!

During his 1991 Senate confirmation hearing, Thomas claimed he didn’t sexually harass Anita Hill or any other women coworkers during his time at federal agencies—when there’s evidence to refute that. Thomas did, however, say that the allegations were part of a “high-tech lynching.” He said, “it is a message that, unless you kow-tow 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.”

Here’s journalist Jill Abramson writing in 2018:

To my surprise, the notion of impeaching Thomas resurfaced during the 2016 campaign. In the thousands of emails made public during the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton, there was one curious document from her State Department files that caught my attention, though it went largely unremarked upon in the press. Labeled “Memo on Impeaching Clarence Thomas” and written by a close adviser, the former right-wing operative David Brock, in 2010, the seven-page document lays out the considerable evidence, including material from our book, that Thomas lied to the Judiciary Committee when he categorically denied that he had discussed pornographic films or made sexual comments in the office to Hill or any other women who worked for him. When I recently interviewed Brock, he said that Clinton “wanted to be briefed” on the evidence that Thomas lied in order to be confirmed to his lifelong seat on the Court. He said he had no idea if a President Hillary Clinton would have backed an effort to unseat Thomas.

And, yes, there’s much more to say about Thomas, so please trudge along with me.

Where to begin? Justice Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed in 2018 despite credible allegations that he’d sexually assaulted women in high school and college. One of his former roommates said he lied under oath when he claimed not to know the meaning of a sexual euphemism while other classmates said he lied about never blacking out from drinking at Yale, among many other details. The FBI received more than 4,500 tips about Kavanaugh and did nothing with them beyond punting them to the Trump administration since the agency said it was only conducting a routine background check. In January, a surprise documentary premiered at Sundance detailing other instances of sexual misconduct that the FBI did not investigate.

Kavanaugh also appears to have lied under oath about his work in the Bush Administration during prior confirmation hearings in 2004 and 2006.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett has connections to the right-wing Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom—the same group that argued the case the Supreme Court used to overturn Roe and is also representing the plaintiffs in the baseless but still hugely consequential abortion pill lawsuit. The organization paid her for speaking five times at its Blackstone Legal Fellowship, a summer program for law students meant to inspire a “distinctly Christian worldview in every area of law.”

ADF is also the legal counsel in a nominal “free speech” case that could actually destroy nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people; it’s called 303 Creative v. Elenis. Barrett was also a member of a religious group, People of Praise, that expelled members who had gay sex. In 2022, former members of the group called for her to recuse herself from 303 Creative; she did not. During a 2017 confirmation hearing for a spot on a lower court, Barrett claimed not to know that ADF had an anti-LGBTQ agenda.

Plus, uh, Barrett getting confirmed in late October 2020 after millions of people had already voted in a presidential election—an election that would oust the man who nominated her—is just an eternal stain on this woman’s tenure.

For years, Justice Clarence Thomas failed to report that billionaire and GOP megadonor Harlan Crow took him on luxury vacations or that Crow bought property from him at inflated prices, including the house where Thomas’ mother still lives and pays zero in rent. This isn’t even the first time Thomas has had to amend his disclosure forms. In 2011, he faced scrutiny for not reporting hundreds of thousands of dollars of his wife’s income from conservative groups including the Heritage Foundation. Thomas then amended 13 years of his reports. Speaking of his wife...

Justice Thomas’ wife, Ginni, has not only earned millions from conservative groups but she’s also a Trump-supporting MAGA activist who wanted to overturn the 2020 election. She sent nearly 30 text messages to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows urging him to help overturn the election and also badgered state lawmakers about it. Here’s one of her texts to Meadows: “Biden crime family...will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition.”

Ginni has made headlines not only for being on the exclusive email listserv of Thomas’ former law clerks but also for sharing pro-Trump messages and dismay over the election results. Most notably, she testified under oath before the House’s January 6th Committee that she believed the 2020 election was stolen. Justice Thomas didn’t recuse himself in any cases related to the election or January 6.

An explosive New York Times report alleged that Justice Samuel Alito leaked the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby birth control decision during a 2014 dinner with a pair of the Supreme Court Historical Society’s evangelical Christian donors. Alito was the author of that ruling—as well as the Dobbs decision which overturned Roe—a draft of which was leaked in full to a journalist in May 2022. Huh! But Alito has denied leaking either and called the Dobbs leak a “grave betrayal” that made the conservative justices “targets of assassination.” And he’s still whining about it to this day—methinks he doth protest too much.

Justice Neil Gorsuch sold a massive property he co-owned to the CEO of a law firm that often argues cases before the court—but he didn’t name the buyer, he only reported income from an LLC. The 40-acre Colorado property had been on the market since 2015, and Greenberg Traurig CEO Brian Duffy bought it just nine days after Gorsuch was confirmed by the Senate in 2017. Gorsuch has previously disclosed the names of people who’ve given him things like a fishing rod and a pair of cowboy boots, but no name this time. He made somewhere between $250,001 and $500,000 from the sale.

Not even Chief Justice John Roberts has avoided the appearance of impropriety. His wife, Jane, was paid more than $10 million in recruiting commissions over eight years from “elite law firms” that also had business before the court. Naturally! Roberts’ own disclosure forms only list Jane as receiving a “salary” as a legal recruiter and don’t detail the amount she’s earned or which law firms the money came from. Seems fine.