Courts

The Latest Supreme Court Disclosure Change Is Bullsh*t

The Court is basically spitting in our faces.

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Supreme Court artsyIn 2023, the Supreme Court was mired in ethics scandals. And it just might get worse! How’s that even possible, you might (rightly) ask? Well, you’ll recall one of the big problems was the revelations of the lavish gifts — frequently splashy luxe travel accommodations — members of the Supreme Court received and never disclosed as required. It’s a real problem — and, combined with the Court’s disregard for established precedent, has tanked the public’s opinion of the institution. The Court’s response has basically been virtue signaling, without any real action. The latest change to disclosure rules is going to make a mockery of transparency.

As reported by Fix the Court, there’s a new change to the judiciary’s disclosure procedures that will make it even harder to figure out when expensive gifts are bestowed on judges and justices. The new guidelines “require filers to disclose travel-related gifts and their values—rather than reporting such gifts as reimbursements—consistent with the Act’s requirements [and] provide guidance to filers on how to value gifts of travel […].” The guidance goes on to specify, “Note: In the case of gifts related to travel, the filer’s estimate of value should be made in reference to the most analogous commercially available substitute (e.g., transportation aboard a private aircraft should be valued at the cost of a first-class ticket for a similar route on a commercial air carrier; travel aboard a private yacht should be valued according to the cost of a ticket on a commercial cruise with similar destinations, duration, and accommodations).”

Except as all but the most deliberately obtuse know, first-class plane tickets are NO WHERE NEAR AS EXPENSIVE as a private jet ride. It sure looks like the federal judiciary is trying to downplay the full extent of the expensive gifts billionaire benefactors are bestowing on their fav jurists.

As Fix the Court’s Gabe Roth notes, “Previously, judges and justices hid the true cost of their more lavish freebies either by erroneously listing them in the ‘reimbursements’ section, where a dollar amount is not required, or by omitting them from their disclosures altogether. These revisions are hardly an improvement.”

And Fix the Court crunches the numbers to show the absurdities this new rule wreaks. Taking, for example, a private jet trip from D.C. to Harlan Crow’s Camp Topridge in upstate New York.

According to a Mar. 20 search on Kayak.com, the cost of a roundtrip ticket from Dulles to the Adirondack Regional Airport (SLK) via Boston in mid-July 2024 is, $1,031 ($689 first leg first class plus $342 second leg economy) — far less than the cost of a seat on a private plane. (There are no direct commercial flights between IAD, DCA or BWI and SLK, and there appear to be no first class options between BOS and SLK.)

The least-luxe option in the same timeframe from Mercury Jets, a private charter company, is $9,830 roundtrip before taxes and fees, though something closer to Crow’s plane, a Bombardier Global 5000, would cost $49,160 roundtrip to charter before taxes and fees.

In other words, the new regulations would appear to permit a justice to call his free private jet flight a $1,031 gift, when in fact the value could be nine to 48 times that.

That is… not improving transparency. It’s the opposite, actually.

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @Kathryn1@mastodon.social.

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