Bloomberg explains the factors that led Justice Alito to recuse from the Supreme Court’s opening case.
Greg Stohr of Bloomberg relays an interview in which Justice Alito describes his late decision to bow out of participating in Suncor Energy v. Boulder County, the prominent climate-change preemption dispute the Supreme Court will hear at the start of its term. He characterized the move as a “difficult judgment call.”
As Stohr’s account notes:
Although Alito initially participated when the court agreed to hear the case in February, he said on Wednesday that a deeper, more careful review in the run-up to the argument led him to withdraw from participation. A coalition of watchdog groups and environmental organizations had urged him to disqualify himself.
“Taking into account the particular arguments that were made on both sides here, I thought that recusal was the prudent step,” Alito said.
Federal law requires judges to step aside if they own stock in one of the parties to a legal dispute but does not impose a similar restriction for holdings in companies that could be affected.
“Under that rule, I was not required to recuse, and I asked our legal office, as is my custom on any case where there’s an arguable recusal issue, to give me their opinion on whether I was required to recuse, and they said, ‘No.'”
The piece also sheds light on why Justice Alito maintains ownership of individual energy stocks despite the recusal considerations.
Alito said his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, inherited the energy shares. “She wants to hold on to individual stock, and so we have stock holdings in some companies in the oil and gas field,” he said.
