Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito sat out yet another case this term, declining to participate in Friday's unanimous decision in Chevron USA Inc. v. Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, a dispute over whether oil and gas companies can be held liable for damage to the Louisiana coast. The recusal followed Alito's January disclosure of a financial interest in ConocoPhillips, the parent company of Burlington Resources, which was a party to the case in the lower court.
The remaining eight justices voted to vacate and remand the case, holding that Chevron had satisfied the requirements to remove the dispute to a different court. Justice Clarence Thomas delivered the opinion. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson filed a concurring opinion in the judgment.
The 8-0 outcome landed without Alito's vote, and without much public explanation beyond the bare financial disclosure. That pattern has become familiar. Newsweek reported that a letter from Supreme Court clerk Scott Harris indicated later filings in the case prompted Alito's withdrawal, though Alito had initially participated when the High Court agreed over the summer to hear the dispute.
Alito's absence from the Chevron case is not an isolated event. Bloomberg reported in 2024 that Alito or his wife owns stock in companies such as Raytheon Co., ConocoPhillips, and a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, holdings spread across roughly two dozen companies. Those investments have forced Alito to recuse himself from 64 cases between 2021 and 2024 alone, Bloomberg found.
Sixty-four recusals over four years is a substantial number for any justice. It raises a straightforward question: at what point do personal financial entanglements begin to interfere with a justice's ability to do the job the public expects?
The Supreme Court's own ethics code addresses this directly. It calls for justices to step aside when they have financial, professional, or personal conflicts. At the same time, the code includes a "presumption of impartiality" and acknowledges that the "rule of necessity may override the rule of disqualification." In other words, the court's internal framework gives justices wide latitude to decide for themselves when a conflict is disqualifying, and when it is not.
That latitude has drawn scrutiny from the left, particularly aimed at the court's conservative wing. As Alito marks 20 years on the Supreme Court, the recusal debate has become a fixture of progressive criticism, though the facts here point to a justice doing exactly what the ethics rules require: stepping aside when a financial interest surfaces.
Alito's recusal in the Chevron case was driven by a disclosed stock holding. That is the system working as designed. A justice identifies a conflict, discloses it, and sits out. No drama. No scandal. Just compliance.
But the broader recusal debate around the Supreme Court has never really been about stock portfolios. It has been about political leverage. Members of Congress and progressive advocacy groups have repeatedly called for both Alito and Thomas to recuse themselves from cases related to presidential immunity and the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. In Thomas's case, critics point to the political activism of his wife, Ginni Thomas, as grounds for disqualification.
Both justices declined those demands. And the ethics code's structure explains why: recusal decisions rest with the individual justice, not with outside political actors. The code's "presumption of impartiality" exists precisely to prevent partisan pressure campaigns from dictating who sits on which case.
It is worth noting the contrast. When Alito has a clear financial conflict, a stock holding in a company tied to a case, he steps aside. When political opponents demand recusal based on a spouse's activism or a justice's perceived ideological leanings, the standard is far murkier. One is a concrete, disclosed conflict. The other is an attempt to shrink the conservative majority by other means.
The three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Jackson, have been described as consistently providing explanations for their own recusals. That transparency is worth noting. But it does not change the underlying dynamic: calls for conservative justices to recuse from politically charged cases have less to do with ethics and more to do with outcomes.
The substance of Chevron USA Inc. v. Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana centers on whether the case belonged in state or federal court. Plaquemines Parish sought to hold oil and gas companies liable for environmental damage to the Louisiana coast. Chevron argued it had met the legal requirements to move the case out of state court.
The Supreme Court agreed with Chevron, vacating the lower court's ruling and sending the case back for further proceedings. The 8-0 vote, with Thomas writing for the court and Jackson concurring separately, suggests the legal question was not especially close, even without Alito's participation.
That matters. Alito's absence did not change the outcome. The court reached a clean, unanimous result. The case will now proceed in a different posture, but the legal principle, that Chevron satisfied removal requirements, stands without dissent.
The Supreme Court faces a high-stakes finish to its current term, with major cases on birthright citizenship, agency power, and election law still unresolved. Whether Alito's stock holdings force additional recusals in any of those cases remains an open question.
Alito's recusal record inevitably feeds into the broader conversation about his future on the bench. Sources have indicated Alito is not expected to retire this term, dampening speculation that has swirled for months. But the frequency of his recusals, 64 in four years, adds a practical dimension to the retirement question that goes beyond ideology or age.
A justice who must regularly sit out cases because of stock holdings is a justice whose participation is unpredictable. That unpredictability matters in a court where a single vote can shift the outcome of landmark decisions. The conservative majority's strength depends not just on the number of seats it holds, but on how many cases each justice can actually hear.
President Trump has signaled he is prepared to fill multiple Supreme Court vacancies if they arise, and Senate Republicans have been watching the calendar closely. The political infrastructure for a potential Alito replacement is already in place, even if the justice himself shows no sign of stepping down.
None of that changes what happened Friday. Alito disclosed a conflict. He stepped aside. The court decided the case without him. The system worked.
What did not work, and never does, is the progressive campaign to treat every recusal as a scandal and every non-recusal as corruption. When a conservative justice follows the rules, the left moves the goalposts. When he doesn't recuse from a politically charged case, they call it an ethics crisis. When he does recuse from a financial conflict, they frame it as proof that the court is compromised.
Senate Republicans are already eyeing the midterm clock as they prepare for whatever comes next on the Supreme Court. The smart play is to ignore the noise and focus on the record: Alito followed the ethics code, the court issued a unanimous ruling, and the case moves forward.
The rules exist for a reason. Alito followed them. His critics would prefer a system where they get to decide which justices hear which cases, and that is not an ethics reform. It is a power grab dressed in a robe.