Harder Co-Leads New Bill to Stop SCOTUS Corruption, Establish Code of Ethics
The bill requires Supreme Court justices to adopt and follow a code of ethics following recent revelations of Justice Clarence Thomas’ history of accepting luxury gifts.
WASHINGTON - This morning, Representative Josh Harder announced his cosponsorship of the Supreme Court Ethics Act, following the news that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has, for decades, been accepting personal gifts from prominent Republican billionaire, Harlan Crow, including $500,000 island-hopping vacations with Crow and his family. The bill will require justices of the Supreme Court to adopt and follow a code of ethics, creates an accountability mechanism for these ethics by establishing advisory review by appellate court judges, places transparency standards on gifts and travel, codifies recusal standards, and requires the court to disclose lobbying and dark money interests before it. Currently, the code of ethics for Supreme Court justices has been relatively opaque. This bill would establish similar ethics rules that are applied to elected government officials with even less influence on national policy.
“Right now billionaires are free to bankroll Supreme Court justices to push their extreme ideological agendas - it goes against everything our democracy stands for. It’s disgusting and we have to fix it,” said Representative Harder. “I was shocked when I read the news of Justice Thomas’ history of accepting luxury gifts and trips. He either has a lot of undisclosed money stuffed under his mattress to pay back these gifts, or he’s allowed a billionaire to subsidize his lifestyle for over 20 years.”
In 2004, when the full extent of Justice Thomas’ history of accepting high-dollar gifts became public, he stopped reporting them all together. The luxury gifts and trips Justice Thomas has accepted include vacationing on Crow’s superyacht, flights on this private jet, and stays at his private resort. Justices are generally required to publicly report all gifts worth more than $415, defined as “anything of value” that isn’t fully reimbursed. The current salary for a Supreme Court justice ranges between $274,000 and $287,000.
This bill builds on Harder’s work to get the influence of special-interest money out of politics.
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