The wife of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito leased land in Oklahoma to an oil and gas company with a deal that she'd make 3/16th of the profit from fuel extracted, according to a report from The Intercept.
The Intercept's Daniel Boguslaw writes that Alito has often recused himself from cases that pose potential conflicts of interest with his investment portfolio. He also points out that the company, Citizen Energy III, doesn't have any cases before the Supreme Court, so his wife's plot of land doesn't post any "direct conflict of interest."
But he added that the case adds 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. “Alito does not have to come across like a drunken Paul Thomas Anderson character gleefully confessing to drinking our collective milkshakes in order to be a real-life, run-of-the-mill political villain.”
Boguslaw points to a majority decision penned by Alito that "radically scaled back the Clean Water Act," and his history of joining other SCOTUS justices in a 2022 ruling that "gutted the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants."
Prior to the Citizen Energy III agreement, "Alito ruled on cases with the potential to impact gas and oil prices, both nationally and in Oklahoma. In Oneok, Inc. v. Learjet, Inc., decided in 2015, Alito ruled with the majority to head off an attempt to block state antitrust laws from being applied to natural gas companies under the Natural Gas Act. Oneok, the largest supplier of natural gas in Oklahoma, runs an active natural gas pipeline through the Alito plot."
Last week, ProPublica revealed that Alito had been taken on a luxury trip by a billionaire who had business before the court.
Read the full report over at The Intercept.
