Under the revised ethics rule, U.S. Supreme Court justices and federal judges on lower courts are not required to publicly disclose when they dine or stay at someone’s private residence, even if the residence belongs to a business entity.
The revised policy was released Monday by the U.S. Judicial Conference’s Financial Disclosure Committee, which sets rules to be followed by the nine justices and other federal judges. Critics said the move diluted ethics requirements.
The committee is reviewing allegations that Justice Clarence Thomas, a member of the court’s 6-3 conservative majority, improperly failed to report gifts, including luxury travel, from wealthy Texas businessman and Republican donor Harlan Crow.
“They might as well call it the Clarence Thomas waiver,” Donald Sherman, chief counsel for the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) in Washington, said of the revised policy.
The U.S. Supreme Court has been embroiled in ethics controversies, with some Democratic lawmakers and court reform advocates pointing to instances of undisclosed trips and gifts involving Clarence Thomas and some other justices. The court last year announced its first formal code of conduct governing the ethical behavior of its judges, though the policy lacks any enforcement mechanism.
The judiciary’s rule-making body said disclosure regulations were updated this week to “clarify” the extent to which gifts received at private residences owned by corporate entities could be considered “personal hospitality”, which judges do not need to list on their disclosure reports.
Gabe Roth, head of the advocacy group Fix the Court, said the new policy weakens strict rules announced last year and “twists” the meaning of personal hospitality in such a way that some of Clarence Thomas’s past stays at Harlan Crow properties could be considered disclosure-exempt.
Those include a stay at Camp Topridge, a private lakeside resort in New York’s Adirondack Mountains that is owned by Topridge Holdings, an entity affiliated with Harlan Crow, as first reported by ProPublica.
Clarence Thomas said last year that he was advised he did not have to report that type of “personal hospitality.”
Attorneys for Clarence Thomas and Harlan Crow, as well as Supreme Court representatives, did not respond to requests for comment.
The disclosure committee, at the urging of Democratic U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and others, adopted tougher rules in March 2023 making it harder for judges to claim the personal hospitality exception.
Those rules said judges still did not need to disclose gifts that include meals, lodging or entertainment given by an individual for a non-business purpose. But the regulations said the exemption did not apply to lodging at commercial properties, such as hotels and resorts, and gifts of hospitality that are paid for by an entity or a third party other than the person providing it.
Under the rule change made Monday, information about stays at a host’s private residence won’t need to be disclosed if an entity other than an individual owns the property, provided the residence isn’t regularly rented out and isn’t a commercial property.
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