Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Hit With Ethics Complaint
Supreme Court Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has found herself at the center of an ethics controversy. The Center for Renewing America, a conservative non-profit, filed a complaint on Monday alleging that Jackson neglected to disclose her husband’s income from his medical malpractice consulting business for over ten years. The period being questioned covers her time on the Supreme Court and her previous federal service before being appointed to the high court by Joe Biden.
The complaint was filed with the federal Judicial Conference Secretary and alleges Justice Jackson “willfully failed to disclose required information” regarding her husband’s income. During her first judicial nomination — to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia — Jackson disclosed two legal medical malpractice consulting clients who paid her husband more than $1,000 in 2011. However, in later filings, she consistently omitted those earnings.
The issue first surfaced when Jackson admitted in her amended judicial disclosure form for 2020, filed during her Supreme Court nomination, that some of her earlier reports had “inadvertently omitted” her husband’s income. The ethics complaint notes that Jackson’s attempt at correcting her previous statements still did not specify which years her disclosures were incorrect, amounting to only a vague admission of her error.
The filing of the complaint was led by Center for Renewing America President Russ Vought, a former senior Trump White House official. Vought has said that Jackson’s glaring omissions could cover up significant conflicts of interest and issues about whether she should recuse herself from participating in some cases.
The latest ethics complaint is not isolated. Progressive activists have previously challenged alleged connections between Justice Clarence Thomas and Republican donor Harlan Crow. The Supreme Court issued the first ethical “code of conduct” for justices and court personnel last month in the face of increasing pressure from Senate Democrats.
Jackson’s situation raises the vital issue of transparency among those in the highest echelons of the judiciary. It calls for a restatement of the importance of stringent adherence to ethical standards and disclosure requirements, ensuring that unelected federal judges remain accountable in some fashion to the people they serve.
