Congress Must Act On Enforceable Supreme Court Ethics Legislation

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 6, 2022 – Today Congress introduced the “21^st Century Courts Act of 2022,” which would establish an ethical code of conduct for the Supreme Court. Currently, Supreme Court justices are only accountable to themselves. This legislation would lay the groundwork to ensure there can be accountability when justices abuse the power of their position by ignoring their own clear conflicts of interest. 

Alliance for Justice has been calling for a Supreme Court code of ethics for years, but it could not be more needed than in the current moment. Justice Thomas has ruled on cases involving the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection despite the fact that his wife, Ginni Thomas, was actively involved in potentially criminal activities in support of those efforts. There must be a way to ensure impartiality on the Court if the justices won’t take responsibility for it themselves. 

Alliance for Justice President Rakim H.D. Brooks issued the following statement: 

“The power of the judiciary depends entirely on the public’s trust, and that trust is in great doubt. We have a conservative majority more interested in their own increasingly illiberal and anti-democratic agenda than in protecting the Constitution and upholding the rights of the American people. Justice Thomas has a clear conflict of interest with cases involving the 2020 election and President Trump’s January 6th insurrection. He has nevertheless failed to recuse himself from cases connected to President Trump’s attempted coup and the violent assault on our nation’s Capitol. We simply cannot shrug and look the other way; there must be accountability. Congress must act to ensure the justices on our nation’s highest court are held to the same ethical standard as all our other federal judges on the lower courts already are. We should accept nothing less.”