Dem senator sees revived Supreme Court ethics bill as an exercise in messaging

WASHINGTON (CN) — Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse is trying his hand once again at a bill that would force the U.S. Supreme Court to adopt an enforceable code of ethical conduct in the public eye.

But while the legislation may be a political nonstarter for Congress’ Republican majority, the Ocean State lawmaker said Tuesday that he was mainly interested in keeping Capitol Hill talking about ethical malfeasance at the high court.

It’s the second time around for Whitehouse’s Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal and Transparency, or SCERT, Act — a measure which made inroads in the Senate during the Joe Biden administration but fizzled out thanks to staunch Republican opposition.

And it comes as Supreme Court justices, some of whom have faced years of scrutiny for their ties to conservative benefactors, rule on challenges to President Donald Trump’s sweeping executive agenda.

Concern about ethically questionable conduct by the justices was supercharged last year after the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling handing Trump and future presidents broad legal immunity for official acts. And in a video message posted to X on Tuesday morning, Whitehouse pointed to that decision as a major reason why he was reviving his SCERT Act.

“You know, Trump, as usual, is trying to occupy all of the real estate in our brains,” said the Rhode Island Democrat. “But we have to remember that one of the checks on him — the law — was lifted off of him by the Supreme Court with a completely unconstitutional presidential immunity decision.”

That ruling, Whitehouse reasoned, meant that the issue of Supreme Court ethics remains an “important question.”

If made law, the SCERT Act would require the high court to draft a binding code of ethics which would be made available for public comment. The measure would also establish a panel of lower court judges tasked with adjudicating ethical complaints against the justices.

Speaking with Courthouse News Tuesday afternoon, Whitehouse said that the new version of his legislation would be largely the same as the first iteration, albeit with some “minor tweaks.”

While Democrats controlled the Senate, Whitehouse’s ethics bill came tantalizingly close to passage, but ultimately met its demise on the chamber floor. Republicans last fall blocked the measure after Democrats brought it up via a procedural mechanism known as unanimous consent.

And after a resounding Republican victory in the 2024 election, the failure of the SCERT Act was largely seen as the end of Democrats’ Supreme Court ethics push, at least for the time being.

In an interview with Courthouse News ahead of the election, Georgia Representative Hank Johnson, who championed the ethics bill on the House side, said there was “little likelihood” such a measure could advance under GOP leadership.

Whitehouse signaled more optimism, telling Courthouse News at the time that “persistence” could help Democrats gain some ground on the issue even while in the minority.

On Tuesday, the Rhode Island senator set realistic expectations for his reintroduced SCERT Act.

“It’s still going to be difficult to make any meaningful progress on the bill, but it’s important,” he said. “You need to try, and it helps remind the American public how a handful of creepy billionaires took over the Supreme Court — they more or less order DoorDash delivery for the justices.”

Republicans have long rejected the push for a binding ethics code at the Supreme Court, arguing that the campaign was led primarily by sour-grapes Democrats angry with the justices for a spate of conservative rulings, such as their 2022 decision rolling back the constitutional right to an abortion.

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, then the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, called Whitehouse’s first SCERT Act “politically motivated legal garbage.”

Asked on Tuesday whether he was hopeful that he could win over some Republicans this time around, Whitehouse was skeptical.

“Not until public pressure mounts,” he said. “At the moment, most of the funding and effort behind the court capture operation was fossil fuels — and essentially, the Republican operation here is run by fossil fuels.”

Democrats first sounded the alarm about ethical malfeasance on the Supreme Court in 2023, after reports emerged that Justice Clarence Thomas had failed to disclose luxury vacations and other gifts paid for by billionaire real estate mogul Harlan Crow. Thomas also faced scrutiny for his ties to the Koch brothers, whose companies had business before the court.

Those revelations sparked a deluge of reports which implicated not only Thomas but his fellow Justice Samuel Alito, who had a similar relationship with conservative legal advocate and Federalist Society co-founder Leonard Leo.

Democratic oversight activities during the Biden administration resulted in a subpoena for Leo demanding that he turn over information related to his financial relationship with Supreme Court justices.

Leo, though, refused to comply — and the Senate never moved to enforce the subpoena.

The Supreme Court, meanwhile, adopted an ethics code of its own in late 2023. But experts and lawmakers have long been unsatisfied with those standards, which they argue lack a clear enforcement mechanism.

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