Justice Alito pushes back on calls to sit out a major Supreme Court climate case

WASHINGTON — Facing calls to step aside in a major upcoming case involving climate change, conservative Justice Samuel Alito is pushing back, with a Supreme Court spokeswoman saying he has no conflict that would require recusal.

“Justice Alito does not have a financial interest in any party” involved in the case, the court spokeswoman said in a statement provided to NBC News. Alito was advised by the court’s legal counsel that “his recusal is not required,” she added.

A group of left-leaning groups on Thursday had asked the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate Alito’s involvement in the case, citing in part his stock holdings in energy companies.

The case, set to be argued and decided in the court’s next term, which starts in October, concerns an attempt by energy companies ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy to throw out a lawsuit in Colorado seeking damages for harms related to climate change.

Alito’s decision not to recuse himself in the case is “undermining public confidence in the impartiality of the court,” liberal groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity and the Alliance for Justice, wrote to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Alito does not own stock in either ExxonMobil or Suncor Energy, according to his most recent financial disclosure report, which was filed last year. But at that time, he did hold stock in oil companies ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66, as well as five other firms involved in the energy sector, his financial disclosure report says.

Earlier in the litigation, in 2023, Alito did recuse himself when the court turned away an appeal from the companies in the Colorado case.

On the same day, the court rejected appeals in similar cases involving other companies, including ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66. Alito also did not participate in those cases.

The court spokeswoman said that Alito was “inadvertently recused” in the earlier Colorado case “because it was considered at the same time as other cases where the justice did have a financial interest in the parties.”

In response, Hannah Story Brown, deputy research director at the Revolving Door Project, one of the groups that signed the letter, said that there is wide understanding that all the cases on the issue are intertwined.

“The oil company petitioners in these cases have been explicit in court filings that they view the cases as linked; there is no reason for Justice Alito to view them otherwise,” she said in a statement.

As a result, Alito should still step aside, Story Brown added.

The upcoming case could benefit energy companies more broadly if the court blocks lawsuits brought under state laws, like the one in Colorado.

But under the Supreme Court’s ethics guidelines, justices are not required to step aside in cases unless there is a direct conflict. Such a conflict could be caused by stock ownership, a personal relationship with one of the parties or a case in which the justice was involved before they were appointed to the court.

In 2023, for example, liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson did not participate in a case involving Harvard when the court struck down affirmative action in university admissions because she had served as a member of the institution’s board of overseers. But she did participate in a parallel case on the same legal issue involving the University of North Carolina.

The letter sent by the liberal groups also cited a provision of the ethics guidelines that says justices should recuse if their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned” by an “unbiased and reasonable person who is aware of all relevant circumstances.”

The guidelines also state, however, that justices generally have a duty to participate in cases because, unlike lower courts, justices cannot be replaced by another judge if they have to recuse.

The latest code of conduct was introduced in 2023 following allegations of ethics lapses.

Gabe Roth, executive director of court watchdog Fix the Court, said that under current law, “stock ownership in one oil company does not require recusal in every case involving the oil industry.”

But, he added, “Justice Alito shouldn’t own these stocks to begin with.”

Roth called on Congress to ban judges and justices from owning individual stocks.