Samuel Alito Has a Corruption Problem

The justice has significant—and familiar—conflicts of interest in an upcoming Big Oil case. The question is: Will he recuse himself?

In April 2023, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who holds stock in seven oil and gas companies, recused himself from voting on a cert petition brought by fossil fuel giants Suncor and ExxonMobil in Suncor v. Boulder County. Boulder is one of dozens of parallel lawsuits being pursued by municipal and state governments seeking damages for decades of Big Oil deception regarding the climate harms that these companies knew their fossil fuel products would cause. Suncor and Exxon hoped that Boulder would allow them to circumvent Alito’s recusal obligations—as their lawyers admitted in an earlier Supreme Court filing, which stressed that the suit was “uniquely positioned” because it had just two defendants and thus was “less likely” than other cases to “present recusal issues.” But Alito did, rightfully, recuse, and without his vote the cert petition failed.

A couple years later, the fossil fuel industry tried again. This time, despite the fact that these were the same petitioners in the same case, they got a very different outcome: Alito declined to recuse himself, and in February 2026, presumably with Alito’s vote, cert was granted. The Court will be considering Boulder in the fall, giving the Court’s rightwing majority a great opportunity to kneecap one of the few avenues remaining to communities seeking accountability for climate harms and deception.

But advocates for fairness aren’t giving up yet. Yesterday, a coalition of watchdog groups—including environmental, civil liberties, and good government organizations—sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee calling for an investigation into........

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