The Judicial Conference of the United States said on Jan. 2 that it is not referring U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), rejecting complaints from a former government official and two U.S. senators.
Russ Vought, who led the White House Office of Management and Budget during President-elect Donald Trump’s administration and is set to lead the office again, filed the complaint against Jackson. He alleged that Jackson violated ethics rules by failing to disclose income that her husband generated as part of his medical malpractice work and may have failed to report private funding for a celebration held after she was confirmed as a Supreme Court justice.
Robert J. Conrad Jr., the secretary of the Judicial Conference, told Vought on Thursday that Jackson “has filed amended financial disclosure statements that address the issues identified in your letter.”
“With these amendments in place, we have no reason to believe that she has done anything other than follow the relevant reporting requirements,” he said.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) asked the conference to refer Thomas to the DOJ. The lawmakers said that Thomas should be investigated for not disclosing the sale of property to billionaire Harlan Crow.
“Justice Thomas’s failure to report this transaction is part of an apparent pattern of noncompliance with disclosure requirements,” they wrote in 2023, referring to trips Thomas took that were paid for by Crow but not disclosed.
Conrad told Johnson on Thursday that the Judicial Conference has issued changes to its disclosure requirements and that Thomas has agreed to follow all of them.
“Justice Thomas has filed amended financial disclosure statements that address several issues identified in your letter. In addition, he has agreed to follow the relevant guidance issued to other federal judges, which would include the guidance mentioned above. We have no reason to believe he has done anything less,” Conrad wrote. He added later, “There is no longer any cognizable basis for acting on your referral request.”
The Judicial Conference is the federal court system’s national policymaking body. The chief justice of the Supreme Court, currently John Roberts, presides over the conference. Its members are the chief judge of each judicial circuit, the chief judge of the Court of International Trade, and a district judge from each regional judicial circuit.
Federal law outlines requirements for judges’ financial disclosures. Supreme Court justices in 2023 adopted their first-ever code of conduct amid increasing scrutiny of their finances.
Conrad also told both Vought and Johnson that the Judicial Conference has never taken a position on whether its authority to refer judges to the DOJ for possibly intentionally violating reporting requirements, conferred by Congress in federal law, applies to Supreme Court justices.
“There is reason to doubt that the Conference has any such authority,” Conrad said. “Because the Judicial Conference does not superintend the Supreme Court and because any effort to grant the Conference such authority would raise serious constitutional questions, one would expect Congress at a minimum to state any such directive clearly. But no such express directive appears in this provision. The provision in fact contains a suggestion to the contrary.”
In light of the complaints against Jackson and Thomas, Conrad said, the conference plans to study the matter in the coming months.
Neither Vought nor the Center for Renewing America, a nonprofit for which he serves as president, appear to have commented on the rejection of their complaint.
The Whitehouse said in a statement to news outlets, “By all appearances, the judicial branch is shirking its statutory duty to hold a Supreme Court justice accountable for ethics violations.”
An attorney representing Thomas has told news outlets that Thomas “has fully complied with the new disclosure requirement.” The Supreme Court did not return a request for comment from Jackson.
From The Epoch Times