Supreme Court Justices - Questionable Practices
- Rex Ballard
- 3 days ago
- 5 min read
Luxury Trips, Real Estate Deals, Spousal Work, and the Supreme Court’s Independence Problem
When the nation’s highest court accepts lavish hospitality from billionaires who have business before it, when family real estate is sold to those same benefactors without timely disclosure, when justices’ spouses earn millions placing lawyers at firms that appear before the Court, and when the only ethics rules on the books lack any real enforcement, ordinary Americans have every right to ask a basic question: Can this Court still claim true independence?
The evidence that prompts the question comes from investigative reporting and the justices’ own financial disclosures.
The Thomas File: Travel, Gifts, and an Undisclosed Real Estate Deal
For more than two decades, Justice Clarence Thomas accepted luxury travel and hospitality from Texas real-estate billionaire and major Republican donor Harlan Crow—private jets, stays at Crow’s exclusive Adirondacks resort, and voyages on Crow’s superyacht. Many of these benefits went undisclosed for years. Crow also helped cover private-school tuition for a relative. Estimates of the cumulative value run into the millions.
In 2014, one of Crow’s companies purchased three Savannah, Georgia, properties for $133,363 from Thomas, his mother, and the family of Thomas’s late brother. The deal included the modest home where Thomas’s mother lived (and continued living afterward under a life estate or rent-free arrangement) plus two vacant lots. Crow’s company later spent tens of thousands on renovations. Thomas did not disclose the sale on his financial disclosure forms. Crow has said he bought the properties to preserve the house for posterity—possibly as a museum—and to improve a blighted neighborhood. Ethics experts told ProPublica the nondisclosure appeared to violate federal reporting requirements.
Ginni Thomas, the justice’s wife, has operated consulting businesses with ties to conservative political networks, including funding linked to activist Leonard Leo. Her post-2020 election activism created an obvious appearance-of-conflict problem when related cases reached the Court. Clarence Thomas did not recuse.
The Gorsuch Colorado Property Sale
Shortly after his 2017 confirmation, Justice Neil Gorsuch and two co-owners sold a 40-acre property in Granby, Colorado, for $1.825 million. The buyer was Brian Duffy, CEO of Greenberg Traurig, a major national law firm that has frequently appeared before the Supreme Court. Gorsuch held a 20 percent stake and reported income between $250,001 and $500,000, but left the buyer’s identity blank on his disclosure form. Duffy has said he did not initially know Gorsuch was a co-owner and cleared the purchase with his firm’s ethics counsel.
Jane Roberts and the Chief Justice
Chief Justice John Roberts’s wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, built a highly successful legal recruiting practice after her husband joined the Court. Documents from a related employment dispute indicated she earned substantial commissions—reports put the figure above $10 million over a multi-year period—placing partners and senior government officials at major law firms, some of which regularly appear before the Supreme Court. Defenders note that spouses are free to work and that recruiting was chosen in part to reduce potential conflicts with practicing law. Critics argue the arrangement creates an appearance that proximity to the Chief Justice can be monetized.
Other Patterns
Justice Samuel Alito accepted an undisclosed 2008 luxury fishing trip to Alaska, arranged with input from Federalist Society leader Leonard Leo and including hedge-fund billionaire Paul Singer, whose firm has had multiple matters before the Court.
Liberal justices face different but still legitimate questions.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s chambers staff repeatedly pressed public universities, libraries, and other institutions hosting her events to buy large quantities of her books. Open-records documents obtained by the Associated Press show staff recommending specific high numbers of copies and facilitating purchases with her publisher. This generated millions in personal royalties and advances. Using taxpayer-funded court staff for personal commercial gain is prohibited in Congress and the executive branch. The Supreme Court’s weak rules allowed it.
Sotomayor has also accepted disclosed gifts, including $4,333 in concert tickets from Bad Bunny’s record label in 2025 while on a private trip to Puerto Rico.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has received very large book advances—more than $2 million, according to one recent year alone, from Penguin Random House for her memoir, on top of earlier multimillion-dollar payments. She has accepted disclosed gifts including Beyoncé concert tickets and artwork for her chambers, along with extensive reimbursed travel for book promotion.
Justice Elena Kagan has a lower profile on these issues, reporting few gifts and once declining even a modest gift basket over ethics concerns. Conservative groups have occasionally called for her recusal in specific cases, but those claims remain contested.
Illegal or Merely Ill-Advised?
Federal law (the Ethics in Government Act) requires justices to report most gifts above a modest threshold and most real-estate transactions over $1,000. Transportation such as private jets and yachts generally does not qualify for the old “personal hospitality” exemption. Multiple ethics experts have stated that Thomas’s pattern of nondisclosures—including the Crow trips and the Savannah real-estate sale—appeared to violate these reporting rules. Intentional false statements on disclosure forms can be a federal crime under the false-statements statute.
In practice, the Judicial Conference declined to refer the matter to the Department of Justice. Thomas later amended some filings, describing omissions as inadvertent. No criminal charges have been filed. The Court’s 2023 Code of Conduct remains non-binding and lacks an independent enforcement mechanism. Lower federal judges face stricter, enforceable rules; Supreme Court justices effectively do not.
Accepting gifts or hospitality from wealthy friends is not automatically illegal in the absence of an explicit quid pro quo. The same is true of the Gorsuch property sale and Jane Roberts’s recruiting work. The legal gray zone, however, does not erase the deeper problem.
Why Independence Matters
Judicial independence is not a privilege of the justices. It is a protection for the people. The Court must be free from political pressure so it can apply the Constitution and statutes without fear or favor. But independence also requires freedom from the appearance—or reality—of private influence.
When wealthy individuals with matters that can come before the Court provide lifestyle benefits measured in six and seven figures, when family real estate is sold to those same individuals without timely disclosure, and when spouses convert access into lucrative professional practices, the appearance of impartiality erodes. Public confidence in the judiciary has declined for years. Part of that decline is partisan warfare. Another part is self-inflicted.
Shasta County residents, like Americans everywhere, depend on a judiciary that is not only independent in fact but perceived as independent. Transparency is not an attack on the Court. It is a necessary condition of its legitimacy. The justices have the power and responsibility to strengthen the rules governing their own conduct. Until they do, questions about influence will continue—and they will be justified.
