Supreme Court Financial Disclosures Reveal You Too Can Vacation In A Justice's House!
A lot of side hustles in the Supreme Court's gig economy.
(Photo by Erin Schaff-Pool/Getty Images)
The Supreme Court released annual financial disclosures for all the justices yesterday (Fix the Court, as always, has them readily available). Or at least all the financial disclosures except for Justice Alito. Much like the Court’s cynical decision to hold the Bruen opinion until there’s a week without a mass shooting, he’s probably timing his release for a week where there’s no widespread distrust of Supreme Court ethics. And just like the Bruen timing, it’s hard to imagine he’ll ever have a good window.
As for the rest of the justices, the disclosures range from wild book deals to partisan handouts to questionable investments. And, of course, the opportunity to vacation as a justice.
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Justice Barrett has a $2 million book deal coming her way, $425,000 of which she got last year. The book purports to be about the importance of judges remaining neutral on the job, a master stroke of gaslighting from a partisan hack who once claimed that “neutrality” required anti-death penalty observant Catholics to recuse themselves from capital cases while refusing to extend the same appearance of neutrality to reproductive or LGTBQ+ rights cases. Because, like her sense of the faith, “neutral” is a fluid term that ebbs and flows with her political aims.
Is her answer “just don’t ever provide a justification for your actions“? Because that’s a kind of neutrality.
Justice Gorsuch received $250,000 for a new book coming out in the next year or two. To date, he’s made a bit over $900,000 off books. [UPDATE: We originally attributed the $250K to a book he already put out, but it’s really an advance on the next one]
Justice Sotomayor earned $115,593 last year for two kids books, plus another $5,125 for optioning one of them for TV.
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Justice Breyer made $7,814.21 from his book last year. That’s still too much for that one.
By the way, on the subject of Barrett’s political hack comments, her little hangout with Mitch McConnell appears on the report, but…
What the public doesn’t see in Barrett’s report is the cost of her flight, hotel and meal, nor will they learn the cost of similar perks enjoyed by the other justices over the past year.
That’s right, there’s a whole category of perks afforded to the justices — sometimes though not always from overtly partisan benefactors — that just never get a proper accounting. There are efforts to change this through legislation, though the Chief Justice has already signaled that he feels the Court is completely above the law so who knows how that turns out.
Back to stuff that actually is disclosed on these reports, the justices’ teaching income represents a more troubling line item. Why is that a problem? Other than schools just lining the pockets of people making a mockery of the rule of law while shrugging it off as “academic freedom,” of course. As Gabe Roth of Fix the Court notes:
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It’s bad enough that the justices predominantly speak to interest groups that serve their perceived teams, with conservative justices appearing at Fed Soc events and the liberals at the American Constitution Society with almost no crossover. But to make matters worse, all three Trump-appointed justices are teaching at their teams’ law schools, namely hard-right George Mason and Notre Dame, which is not a great look from a supposedly apolitical institution.
Justices are limited to receiving $29,895 in teaching income. But they took advantage:
Justice Thomas took in $29,595 from George Washington and Notre Dame.
Justice Gorsuch got $26,541 from ASS Law (George Mason), but Fix the Court notes that Justice Kagan joined him for one of his two weeks teaching and took no salary for her time.
Justice Kavanaugh got $25,541, also for teaching at ASS Law.
Justice Barrett made $14,280 for teaching at Notre Dame, where she was a professor before getting elevated to the bench.
While Alito hasn’t turned his in yet, he should be getting some teaching income as well.
When it comes to spouses, the only interesting revelation involved noted January 6 wingnut Ginni Thomas. From Fix the Court:
Given the recent ethical scandals surrounding Justice Thomas and his wife Ginni, it is interesting to note that for 2021 Thomas listed the value of Ginni’s Liberty Consulting as up to $15,000, down from the 2020 value of up to $50,000 and down further from 2019, when Liberty was listed as valued at up to $250,000, which was just after she received two six-figure contracts, in 2017 and 2018, from a conservative group, as reported in the New Yorker. It is unclear why the value has decreased thus.
Roberts and Breyer (and we presume Alito) are the last justices with individual stock holdings. While having a personal financial stake in industries impacted by your rulings isn’t as bad as, say, your wife plotting an assault on democracy with the White House Chief of Staff, it’s still not a great look.
Sadly, we can report on only two justice stock sales in the last year: Breyer’s sale of Paccar for reasons unknown and Alito’s sale of his Boeing shares. The latter occurred so that Alito could participate in a 20-794, Servotronics v. Rolls-Royce PLC and Boeing, a case granted cert. in Mar. 2021 but dismissed in Sept. 2021. Curiously, Alito didn’t sell his ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66 shares, so he had to sit out BP PLC, et al., v. City of Baltimore, argued in Jan. 2021, where the oil companies were among the “al.”
And multiple justices are renting out their second homes for anyone looking to enjoy the justice lifestyle.
The Chief Justice brought in “$15,001 – $50,000” for his Maine vacation cottage (and some pocket change for something in Ireland). Thomas collected rental income from a partnership amounting to “$50,001 – $100,000,” Kagan had a DC rental property worth “$1,001 – $2,500” and Sotomayor collected “$5,001 – $15,000” on a rental property that she’s still paying the mortgage on. Given that Sotomayor’s place is in New York and appraised between $1 million and $5 million, that’s a pretty remarkable deal for some lucky renter!
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
