Justice Samuel Alito did not participate in three decisions the Supreme Court announced in a Monday order list, continuing a pattern of recusals tied to financial holdings that has kept the senior conservative jurist on the sidelines in dozens of cases over the past several years.
The court offered no reason for Alito's absence from the three matters. That silence is standard, Supreme Court justices decide for themselves whether and when to step aside, and the institution's practice is to note non-participation without elaboration.
Two of the three cases involved Johnson & Johnson as petitioner. In Johnson & Johnson Consumer Inc. v. Noohi and Johnson & Johnson, et al. v. San Diego City Employees, et al., the court declined to hear the appeals. The third matter, March, Anthony W. v. United States, involved a motion for leave to proceed as a veteran, which the court denied. Justice Brett Kavanaugh also did not participate in one of the two Johnson & Johnson cases, Newsweek reported.
The Monday absences follow a well-documented trail. Bloomberg reported in 2024 that Alito or his wife owns stock in multiple companies, including a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson. That same reporting found Alito had recused himself from 64 cases between 2021 and 2024 because of his ownership of shares in companies that were parties to litigation before the court.
The Johnson & Johnson connection makes the Monday recusals unsurprising. What draws attention is the sheer volume, 64 cases across four terms, and the fact that the court's own ethics framework leaves the decision entirely to the individual justice, with no external review.
Alito's non-participation was not limited to Monday. On Friday, he sat out another decision in Chevron USA Inc. v. Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana. He had recused himself from that case in January after disclosing a financial interest in ConocoPhillips, the parent company of Burlington Resources, which was a party to the case at the lower-court level.
Taken together, the four absences in a single week illustrate how financial entanglements can quietly shrink the effective bench on any given day. On a nine-member court split six-to-three between conservatives and liberals, every recusal shifts the math.
The Supreme Court moved in February to tighten its procedures around exactly this kind of situation. The court announced it had adopted revised rules requiring parties in cases to submit stock ticker symbols where applicable. A press release said many of the changes are designed to support newly developed software that will help identify potential conflicts for the justices.
The software will compare information about parties and attorneys with lists maintained by each justice's chambers, running recusal checks that supplement existing conflict-checking procedures. The court described the new system as an addition to, not a replacement for, current protocols.
The timing matters. The court faces a high-stakes finish to its current term, which is expected to end in June, with major cases still pending. Every justice's full participation carries weight, and every absence invites scrutiny from partisans on both sides.
The Supreme Court's Code of Conduct calls for justices to recuse themselves when they have financial, professional, or personal conflicts. But the enforcement mechanism is the justice's own conscience. No panel reviews the decision. No outside body can compel a recusal or question one.
For Alito, that self-policing has produced a long record of stepping aside, 64 times in four years, by Bloomberg's count, plus the new batch this month. That record cuts two ways. It shows a justice taking the financial-conflict rules seriously enough to sit out case after case. It also raises a practical question: whether the volume of recusals itself becomes a problem for a court that depends on full participation to resolve the country's hardest legal disputes.
Critics of the court's self-regulation model, mostly on the left, have long argued that justices should face the same kind of external ethics oversight that applies to lower federal judges. Conservatives have generally defended the court's independence, noting that the Constitution vests judicial power in the Supreme Court and that no statute gives Congress authority to impose a binding recusal standard on Article III's highest bench.
Alito's case is an interesting test of both positions. He is doing what the Code of Conduct asks, stepping aside when a financial interest exists. But the frequency raises the question of whether the simpler solution would be to divest the holdings that keep pulling him off the bench.
Alito's name has been at the center of Washington's rumor mill for months. Recent reporting has dampened expectations of a retirement this term, but the speculation has not disappeared.
The current court holds a six-to-three conservative majority. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett round out the conservative bloc. Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson make up the liberal wing.
Any vacancy would carry enormous political consequences. President Trump has signaled readiness to fill potential openings, and Senate Republicans have been watching the calendar closely as midterm politics loom.
For now, Alito remains on the bench, just not on every case. His Monday absences drew no public comment from the court or from Alito himself. The three cases in question were disposed of without his vote, and the court moved on.
Alito recently marked 20 years on the Supreme Court, a tenure that has placed him at the center of some of the most consequential rulings of the modern era. His recusal record over the past several years is a footnote to that legacy, but it is a footnote that keeps getting longer.
Recusals rarely make front-page news. They are procedural, bloodless, and easy to overlook. But on a court where a single vote can determine whether a case is heard at all, or how a landmark dispute is resolved, every empty chair matters.
The February rule changes suggest the court itself recognizes the problem. Stock-ticker requirements and automated conflict-checking software are sensible, overdue steps. They may reduce the number of cases where a justice discovers a conflict too late or misses one entirely.
But software cannot fix the underlying issue: justices who hold financial interests broad enough to create recurring conflicts. The court's new tools will flag problems faster. Whether justices act on those flags, and whether the institution ever moves beyond self-policing, remains an open question.
Senate Republicans are already watching the court's calendar with one eye on the midterms. If the current term ends in June with more recusals and no retirements, the conversation will shift, but it will not go away.
A justice who follows the rules and steps aside when he should deserves credit for that. But when stepping aside becomes a recurring feature of the term, it is fair to ask whether the rules are the problem, or the portfolio is.