Democratic Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamie Raskin are introducing a new piece of legislation aimed at putting a cap on the number and value of gifts U.S. Supreme Court justices can receive.
The High Court Gift Ban Act, unveiled Tuesday, would prohibit justices from receiving gifts valued at more than $50 at a time, or more than $100 total per year. The bill would also put an $18,000 cap on gifts of personal hospitality, which are currently unregulated.
Justice Clarence Thomas has been under intense scrutiny after an investigation by the Senate Judiciary Committee found that he failed to include luxury vacations paid for by Republican megadonor Harlan Crow on his financial disclosure forms. Thomas has been subject to several other complaints, including that he never paid back a loan on his R.V. and that he cavorted with the Koch brothers while ruling on cases they’d brought to the Supreme Court.
Earlier this month, a report from a judicial watchdog found that Supreme Court justices had received close to a total of $3 million in gifts over the last 20 years—with more than $2.4 million of those gifts being directed solely to Thomas. Through gifts, Thomas has roughly doubled his official published income from the last 20 years.
Justice Samuel Alito has similarly come under fire for accepting lavish gifts from Republican billionaires, including over-the-top, all-expenses-paid vacations.
It seems, however, that little can be done to rein in the court’s high-ranking members over mounting concerns about their ethics. Raskin and Ocasio-Cortez wrote to Chief Justice John Roberts late last week, seeking answers on what he planned to do about Thomas, as well as Alito, whose recent flag scandal has also called into question whether he has conflicts of interest in cases before the court. Roberts has not yet responded.
“The Supreme Court is the highest court in the land but has the lowest ethical standards, which means pay-to-play billionaires, right-wing dark money groups and carbon-emitting special interests have freedom to purchase the best justice money can buy,” said Raskin in a statement Tuesday.
Ocasio-Cortez called their bill “a commonsense solution to address the deeply troubling and unethical influence dark money is having on our nation’s highest judicial body.”
“This is not about politics—it’s about safeguarding the strength and integrity of our democracy,” she said. It’s unlikely, though, that such a bill would pass in a brutally indifferent Republican-led House.
