Keeping a promise made during Congress’s recent break, New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has filed articles of impeachment against Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, accusing both of "high crimes and misdemeanors" for alleged ethcial breaches she says are interfering with their duties on the high court and their oaths to the Constitution.

What You Need To Know

  • Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has filed articles of impeachment against Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas for alleged ethics violations

  • Alito and Thomas have been under fire for multiple reports alleging gifts from wealthy donors and suspected biases in favor of parties appearing before the Supreme Court

  • The high court, in the wake to these allegations, has instituted a new code of conduct, though the code lacks mechanisms for enforcement or acting on ethical breaches

  • Ocasio-Cortez's articles of impeachment face a tough road; Republicans, with whom Alito and Thomas are ideologically aligned, maintain a majority in the House of Representatives

“The unchecked corruption crisis on the Supreme Court has now spiraled into a Constitutional crisis threatening American democracy writ large. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito’s pattern of refusal to recuse from consequential matters before the court in which they hold widely documented financial and personal entanglements constitutes a grave threat to American rule of law, the integrity of our democracy, and one of the clearest cases for which the tool of impeachment was designed," Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said in a statement Wednesday.

“Justice Thomas and Alito’s repeated failure over decades to disclose that they received millions of dollars in gifts from individuals with business before the court is explicitly against the law. And their refusal to recuse from the specific matters and cases before the court in which their benefactors and spouses are implicated represents nothing less than a constitutional crisis. These failures alone would amount to a deep transgression worthy of standard removal in any lower court, and would disqualify any nominee to the highest court from confirmation in the first place," she added.

Thomas, Ocasio-Cortez alleged, has refused to report the source, description and value of gifts from wealthy benefactors like Harlan Crow, a Republican megadonor.

Recently, Propublica has published a series of reports finding a pattern of gifts from Crow to Thomas and his family over decades, including private school tuition for a relative, annual luxury vacations, cross-country private jet trips, as well as a previously-undisclosed real estate deal in which Thomas sold a home and two vacant lots to Crow for nearly nine times its estimated value. In amended disclosures, Thomas has said that he "inadvertently omitted" certain gifts from Crow.

The congresswoman also alleged that Thomas has refused to recuse himself from matters that his wife has a financial interest in — including cases filed by an entity tied to Federalist Society chair Leonard Leo. Leo is part of a network of conservative legal groups, including The 85 Fund, which — under a prior name — paid consulting fees to a firm owned by Justice Thomas' wife, Virginia "Ginni" Thomas. She also took issue with Thomas refusing to recuse himself from cases involving Donald Trump, given that Ginni Thomas actively lobbied to help Trump overturn the results of the 2020 Presidential election.

Alito, Ocasio-Cortez alleged, has repeatedly refused to recuse himself from matters to which he may have a bias, including any matters related to the Jan. 6 insurrection attempt that sought to overturn the 2020 election. On at least two occasions — January 2021 and summer 2023 — homes owned by Alito flew flags associated with political movements supporting Trump and his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. 

Federal law, Ocasio-Cortez notes, "does not require an investigation into the heart and mind of individual justices." Rather, it "requires recusal whenever a justice’s impartiality 'might reasonably be questioned.' Since a 'stop the steal' symbol first flew on a flagpole outside Justice Alito’s home, it has been reasonable to question Justice Alito’s ability to impartially adjudicate matters related to the January 6 insurrection."

It also cites Alito allegedly accepted luxury travel from individuals with business before the court — like Paul Singer, whose hedge fund has appeared before the court 10 times — without publicly disclosing those gifts or recusing himself from cases involving those donors.

A request to the Supreme Court for comment from Justices Alito and Thomas has not yet been returned.

Ocasio-Cortez has made a point of challenging the Supreme Court and its justices on alleged ethics violations in recent months. In June, she and Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., sent a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts to investigate ethical misconduct among his fellow justices. Days after the letter was sent, Ocasio-Cortez and Raskin introduced a bill banning Supreme Court justices from accepting gifts valued at more than $50, and place a cap on gifts of "personal hospitality."

“The Supreme Court is the highest court in the land but has the lowest ethical standards, which means pay-to-play billionaires, right-wing dark money groups and carbon-emitting special interests have freedom to purchase the best justice money can buy,” Raskin said in a statement. “Congress can’t stand idly by as this emboldened and imperious Court pursues a lawless right-wing agenda and strips our citizens of their Constitutional rights."

The proposed legislation would put legislative teeth to a Supreme Court code of conduct and ethics that was instituted last year — though the code lacks mechanisms for enforcement. The Brennan Center, a progressive public policy institute, said that the new rules "are more loophole than law" in an analysis.

The high court this term offered a lax attitude toward federal ethics codes. In a 6-3 decision rendered last month, the Supreme Court limited the scope of an anti-bribery law, with the majority writing that federal law can’t prevent state or local officials from accepting "thank you" gifts or rewards, so long as they’re given after the official took action, and without explicit influence. The decision came along ideological lines, with Alito and Thomas voting in the majority.

Alito and Thomas were also part of the majority in one of the most potentially impactful decisions in the court's history, as part of a 6-3 majority that provides prosecutorial immunity for a president so long as their alleged crimes are undertaken as "official" acts of the office.

Though Ocasio-Cortez resolution is a powerful statement, it would be a surprise if her articles of impeachment advanced out of the House, where Republicans hold a seven member advantage over Democrats.