John,

Before the long holiday weekend, CREW was hard at work responding to yet another ethics crisis on the Supreme Court.

After the New York Times broke the news that Justice Samuel Alito flew yet another flag associated with the Stop the Steal movement, on Friday afternoon we sent a letter to Chief Justice Roberts calling on him to immediately create an enforcement mechanism for the Supreme Court Code of Conduct and to encourage Justice Alito to recuse from cases related to January 6 and the 2020 election.

That Alito flew a flag carried at the insurrection in the days immediately following the insurrection is tremendously alarming.

But that he did so again, years later and on multiple occasions, as even more high stakes insurrection-related cases came before the Court, simply cannot be explained away.

Federal judges legally must recuse themselves if their impartiality can reasonably be questioned. At this point it is difficult to make any reasonable case for Alito’s impartiality—it can and must be questioned.

Here’s the bottom line: Alito must not sit on cases about the 2020 election or the insurrection he appears to have supported.

Unfortunately, Alito has shown no sign that he is willing to recuse himself, despite being required under the current ethics code to do so.

It is ludicrous that Alito may continue to rule without consequence on cases central to American democracy, such as whether President Trump has immunity for his actions on January 6th—but sadly it is possible under our current system.

That is why we need the Supreme Court to make its ethics code binding and enforceable.

As our letter to Chief Justice Roberts said: “We fear that if the Court fails to act, the integrity of this institution that we all revere will be beyond saving.”

This is a crisis for the legitimacy of the court and for our democracy. Just like we have not moved on from Justice Clarence Thomas’s ethics scandals, we are not going to move on from Alito’s.

Thank you for your support,

Noah Bookbinder
President
CREW