A long-delayed financial disclosure from Justice Samuel Alito shows he never sold the oil and gas holdings that watchdog groups say should disqualify him from participating in a major climate case before the Supreme Court.

The report, posted Monday by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, covers Alito's finances for calendar year 2025 and is the last disclosure the public will see before the court hears the case in October. Alito signed the filing on Aug. 11 — three weeks before it was made public (financial disclosure).

NBC News Supreme Court reporter Lawrence Hurley wrote on Bluesky that the filing confirms the justice is "still holding on to oil & gas stocks ahead of the big climate change case being heard in October."

Two watchdog groups asked the Senate Judiciary Committee in May to investigate whether Alito violated the court's ethics code by remaining on the case, as E&E News reported.

"Alito's decision to reverse course and participate in granting the companies' most recent petition — when a finding in favor of the companies could directly and indirectly benefit both himself and his billionaire friend — is an indefensible breach of ethical boundaries," the groups wrote.

"As these parallel state climate deception cases are undeniably interlinked, and due to Justice Alito's vested interests in the oil and gas industry … the only ethical option for Justice Alito is a blanket recusal from participating in any one of them," the letter states.

Federal law requires Supreme Court justices, like other federal judges, to file annual financial disclosures listing investments, outside income and liabilities, though the filings report values only in broad ranges. The filings have become a recurring focal point in the broader debate over the court's self-policing, since justices are the only federal judges not bound by a binding ethics enforcement mechanism.

The holdings remain

The filing released Monday answers a question left open by the May reporting. E&E News noted at the time that Alito might have sold the holdings, which would have resolved the conflict. The new report shows he did not.

Alito still holds shares in ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66, along with AES Corp., BHP Billiton, Black Hills Corp., OGE Energy and Woodside Energy, according to the disclosure. Each position appears at the same value range as the prior year, and none shows a sale.

The largest energy-related item is a mineral interest in Grady County, Oklahoma, valued by the report at between $100,001 and $250,000.

No other justice holds oil and gas stock directly, E&E News reported. Chief Justice John Roberts owns shares in two companies, neither of them in energy.

The case at issue

Watchdogs are demanding that Alito recuse himself from an energy case he agreed in February to hear. It began as a lawsuit by the city and county of Boulder, Colorado, seeking to make fossil fuel producers pay for the costs of climate change — part of a wave of similar lawsuits by state and local governments nationwide seeking to hold the industry liable for climate-related costs. The companies in the case — Suncor Energy and Exxon Mobil — are asking the justices to rule that federal law bars local governments from bringing such suits at all. A ruling in their favor would shield the industry from dozens of similar cases nationwide, according to E&E News.

Eight of the nine justices released their 2025 disclosures on June 29, Reuters reported. Alito was the only one granted a 90-day extension, which ran into late September — placing his disclosure within days of the scheduled argument.

Lisa Graves, a former senior Justice Department official who directs the watchdog group True North Research, called it "hugely problematic" that Alito holds investments that could be affected by the case.

"Judges should not be ruling on cases where their ruling could benefit themselves financially," Graves said. "That's just a core principle of judicial ethics."

The court's response

In May, a court spokeswoman told NBC News that the justice faces no conflict because he owns no stock in the two companies before the court. "Justice Alito does not have a financial interest in any party" involved in the case, the spokeswoman said, adding that court lawyers advised him "his recusal is not required."

The spokeswoman said Alito had been "inadvertently recused" from an earlier Colorado petition because the court considered it alongside other cases in which he held stock in the parties, NBC News reported. But Hannah Story Brown, deputy research director at the Revolving Door Project, rejected that account.

"The oil company petitioners in these cases have been explicit in court filings that they view the cases as linked; there is no reason for Justice Alito to view them otherwise," she said.

Notably, the companies in which Alito owns stock made that same argument themselves in 2022, telling the justices the Colorado suit was "uniquely positioned" and "less likely than those cases to present recusal issues," E&E News reported.

Ties to Paul Singer

The watchdog letter also raised Alito's ties to Republican donor Paul Singer, who runs the hedge fund Elliott Investment Management. Elliott owns more than 52 million shares of Suncor, worth more than $2.3 billion, the outlet reported. Alito acknowledged, after a ProPublica report, that he took a private jet to Alaska for a 2008 fishing trip paid for by Singer and left it off his disclosure form.

The Supreme Court adopted its first formal ethics code in 2023, following reports of undisclosed luxury travel by justices. The code lets each justice decide his or her own recusals. Graves told E&E News that the code is "toothless and basically meaningless since it's not enforceable." Congress has considered legislation to create an enforceable code of conduct and an independent review process for the court, but such measures have not advanced — leaving recusal decisions, including this one, in the individual justice's hands as the October argument approaches.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the Senate Judiciary Committee's ranking member, said in a statement to E&E News that the letter "highlights the need for an enforceable code of conduct to ensure justices do the right thing when it comes to recusals and other ethics issues." Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) did not return a request for comment.

Source: Raw Story