A long-delayed financial disclosure from Justice Samuel Alito shows he never sold the oil and gas holdings that watchdogs say disqualify him from a major climate case.
The report was posted on Monday by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts and covers Alito's finances for calendar year 2025. It is the last disclosure the public will see before the Supreme Court hears the case in October. Alito signed the filing on Aug. 11, three weeks before it reached the public.
NBC News Supreme Court reporter Lawrence Hurley wrote on Bluesky that the filing confirms the justice is "still holding on to oil & gas stocks ahead of the big climate change case being heard in October."
Two watchdog groups asked the Senate Judiciary Committee in May to investigate whether Alito violated the court's ethics code by staying on the case, as reported by E&E News.
"Alito's decision to reverse course and participate in granting the companies' most recent petition — when a finding in favor of the companies could directly and indirectly benefit both himself and his billionaire friend — is an indefensible breach of ethical boundaries," the groups wrote.
"As these parallel state climate deception cases are undeniably interlinked, and due to Justice Alito's vested interests in the oil and gas industry … the only ethical option for Justice Alito is a blanket recusal from participating in any one of them," the letter states.
The filing released Monday answers a question the May reporting left open. E&E News noted at the time that Alito might have sold the holdings, which would have resolved the conflict.
He did not, according to the new report.
Alito still holds shares in ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66, along with AES Corp., BHP Billiton, Black Hills Corp., OGE Energy and Woodside Energy, the financial disclosure report shows. Each of those positions appears at the same value range it carried the prior year, and none shows a sale.
The largest energy-related item is a mineral interest in Grady County, Oklahoma, which the report values at between $100,001 and $250,000.
No other justice holds oil and gas stock directly, E&E News reported. Chief Justice John Roberts owns shares in two companies, neither of them in energy.
Watchdogs are demanding Alito recuse himself from an energy case he agreed to hear in February. It began as a lawsuit by the city and county of Boulder, Colorado, seeking to make fossil fuel producers pay for the costs of climate change.
The companies, Suncor Energy and Exxon Mobil, are asking the justices to rule that federal law bars local governments from bringing those suits at all. A ruling for them would shield the industry from dozens of similar cases nationwide, according to E&E News.
Eight of the nine justices released their 2025 disclosures on June 29, Reuters reported. Alito was the only one granted a 90-day extension. That extension ran into late September, according to Reuters, which would have placed his disclosure within days of the argument.
Lisa Graves, a former senior Justice Department official who directs the watchdog group True North Research, called it "hugely problematic" that Alito holds investments that could be affected by the case, E&E News reported.
"Judges should not be ruling on cases where their ruling could benefit themselves financially," Graves said. "That's just a core principle of judicial ethics."
In May, a court spokeswoman told NBC News that the justice is in the clear because he owns no stock in the two companies before the court.
"Justice Alito does not have a financial interest in any party" involved in the case, the spokeswoman said, adding that court lawyers advised him "his recusal is not required."
The spokeswoman said Alito had been "inadvertently recused" from an earlier Colorado petition because the court considered it alongside other cases in which he held stock in the parties, NBC News reported. But Hannah Story Brown, deputy research director at the Revolving Door Project, rejected that account.
"The oil company petitioners in these cases have been explicit in court filings that they view the cases as linked; there is no reason for Justice Alito to view them otherwise," she said.
The companies that Alito owns stock in made that argument themselves in 2022, telling the justices the Colorado suit was "uniquely positioned" and "less likely than those cases to present recusal issues," E&E News reported.
The letter also raised Alito's ties to Republican donor Paul Singer, who runs the hedge fund Elliott Investment Management.
Elliott owns more than 52 million shares of Suncor, worth more than $2.3 billion, the outlet reported. Alito acknowledged after a ProPublica report that he took a private jet to Alaska for a 2008 fishing trip paid for by Singer and left it off his disclosure form, E&E News noted.
The court adopted its first formal ethics code in 2023, after reports of undisclosed luxury travel by justices, a code that lets each justice decide his or her own recusals.
Graves told E&E News that the code is "toothless and basically meaningless since it's not enforceable."
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the Senate Judiciary Committee's ranking member, said in a statement to E&E News that the letter "highlights the need for an enforceable code of conduct to ensure justices do the right thing when it comes to recusals and other ethics issues."
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) did not return a request for comment to the publication.
