Podcast Center
Video Center
Webcasts
Resource Center
Events
April 20, 2023 at 01:02 PM
The nine Supreme Court justices in total are worth at least $24 million. Or it might be closer to $68 million.
It’s impossible to get more specific than that. That’s because federal ethics laws require justices to disclose only those assets that might pose a conflict of interest. As a result, the public can only assess part of each justice’s holdings, valued in a broad range.
But the most recent numbers, which come from the justices’ 2021 financial disclosures released last year and analyzed by Bloomberg News, show that at least six of the Supreme Court justices are multimillionaires.
That means the judges, appointed to make decisions affecting millions of Americans, are significantly richer than around 90% of them.
In the wake of recent ProPublica reports exposing Justice Clarence Thomas’s close relationship with a GOP megadonor, Democratic lawmakers and progressive advocates have ramped up scrutiny of the Supreme Court’s ethics rules.
Democrats have reintroduced bills to set new ethical standards for the Supreme Court and called for hearings into the court’s recent conduct. Republicans point out that the donor, Texas real estate investor Harlan Crow, hasn’t been involved in any case that reached the Supreme Court.
Court experts say that significant gaps remain even in the available disclosures, which also include information on spouses and dependent children.
None of the justices are required to list the value of their personal residences or the contents of their government retirement accounts. These are often the biggest assets people own, said Gabe Roth, executive director of advocacy group Fix the Court.
The review of the Supreme Court’s financial disclosures shows that Thomas is not the only justice leading a privileged lifestyle.
Although he and his colleagues on the bench are expected to act as neutral arbiters of the law, advocates argue they bring their life experiences with them as they weigh in on cases concerning issues related to class, including student debt relief, renter’s rights, disability claims, and labor unions.
The financial disclosure policies that apply to the US federal judiciary, enacted in the late 1970s, specifically state that the disclosures are not supposed to represent net worth. Instead, they are meant to flag potential conflicts of interest, such as investments in companies that come before the Supreme Court.
Justices have recused themselves from cases involving companies in which they had a financial stake. But the disclosures are relatively narrow, in part due to concerns about protecting the judges’ privacy, according to the regulations.
As a co-equal branch of government, the court has argued it has discretion to set its own ethical rules. But Democratic lawmakers for over a decade have introduced legislation that would impose oversight of the Supreme Court, including establishing a code of ethics to ensure the justices are not improperly influenced and an independent group to review the high court’s conduct.
Chief Justice John Roberts is the richest of the Supreme Court justices, reporting between $9 million to $27 million in assets. That includes a waterfront cottage in Maine, located on an island accessible only by boat, which is valued at an estimated $250,000-$500,000 per year, and part of a cottage in Ireland, valued at less than $15,000.
