This response to a Wall Street Journal Editorial Board opinion piece was originally published as a letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal. Read the piece on the original site.
Your editorial “Justice Alito’s Climate Case Recusal” (Sept. 30) derided the successful calls for Justice Alito to recuse from the upcoming climate deception case Suncor v. Boulder as “specious” and “partisan,” while framing a refusal to recuse as an “honorable tradition.”
The letter that my organization, alongside 29 others, sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee this spring urged an investigation of Justice Alito’s irregular recusal habits in this case. We argued that he should recuse for the same reason that he previously recused from this case in 2023: because he holds stock in companies involved in several of the ongoing climate deception cases that the oil company petitioners explicitly view as linked.
Justice Alito has made up to $2.9 million from his fossil-fuel interests since he joined the court, according to the Guardian. If the editorial board wants Justice Alito to decide cases in favor of the oil and gas industry, they should be lamenting his evident preference for remaining an oil and gas industry investor, not urging him to act with the impunity of a man who thinks he is above the law.
The risk of a 4-4 Supreme Court split isn’t that justice will be denied, but that a local government’s case against two corporations for violating state laws will be able to proceed in state court. That is hardly a greater loss for the integrity of American federalism than a conflicted justice casting a deciding vote.
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