Spotlight on Alito

In a lease filed with the Grady County clerk, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito entered into an agreement with Citizen Energy III for revenue generated from oil and gas obtained from a plot of hard scrabble she inherited from her late father. It is one of thousands of oil and gas leases across Oklahoma, one of the top producers of fossil fuels in the United States.

Last year, before the lease was activated, a line in Alito’s financial disclosures labeled “mineral interests” was valued between $100,001 and $250,000. If extraction on the plot proves fruitful, the lease dictates that Citizen Energy will pay Alito’s wife 3/16ths of all the money it makes from oil and gas sales.

In the past, Alito has often recused himself from cases that pose potential conflicts of interest with his vast investment portfolio. Many of these recusals were born from an inheritance of stocks after the death of Alito’s father-in-law, Bobby Gene Bomgardner. Because Citizen Energy III isn’t implicated in any cases before the Supreme Court, Alito’s holding in Oklahoma doesn’t appear to pose any direct conflicts of interest. But it does add context to a political outlook that has alarmed environmentalists since Alito’s confirmation hearing in 2006 — and cast recent decisions that embolden the oil and gas industry in a damning light.

“There need not be a specific case involving the drilling rights associated with a specific plot of land for Alito to understand what outcomes in environmental cases would buttress his family’s net wealth,” Jeff Hauser, founder and director of the Revolving Door Project, told The Intercept.

In May, Alito penned a majority decision in Sackett v. EPA which radically scaled back the Clean Water Act, reducing its mandate by tens of millions of acres.

[...]

Prior to targeting the Clean Water Act, Alito joined the courts’ other conservative justices in attacking another set of EPA powers under the Clean Air Act in West Virginia v. EPA. The 2022 ruling gutted the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

  The Intercept

Journalists are digging into Alito's life now. Who's next? Gorsuch and Roberts must be jumpy. And I still want to know who paid off Kavanaugh's debts.

UPDATE 05/25/2024:  They may have been digging, but they weren't reporting....

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 07/03/2023: