Ketanji Brown Jackson hit with ethics complaint over income disclosures

Supreme Court Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson faces an ethics complaint from a conservative non-profit alleging that she failed to disclose income from her husband's business for more than a decade.

The Center for Renewing America filed the complaint on Monday with the Judicial Conference Secretary alleging that she "willfully failed to disclose required information regarding her husband’s medical malpractice consulting income for over a decade."

"As part of her nomination to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Justice Jackson disclosed the names of two legal medical malpractice consulting clients who paid her husband more than $1,000 for the year 2011," the complaint continued. "On her subsequent filings, however, Justice Jackson repeatedly failed to disclose that her husband received income from medical malpractice consulting fees."

"We know this by Justice Jackson’s own admission in her amended disclosure form for 2020, filed when she was nominated to the Supreme Court, that 'some of my previously filed reports inadvertently omitted' her husband's income from 'consulting on medical malpractice cases,'" it went on. "Compounding the omission and further demonstrating willfulness, Justice Jackson has not even attempted to list the years for which her previously filed disclosures omitted her husband’s consulting income. Instead, in her admission of omissions on her 2020 amended disclosure form (filed in 2022), Justice Jackson provided only the vague statement that 'some' of those past disclosures contained material omissions."

"Given that she was aware of this provision when she filed her first form in 2012, it would appear the Justice Jackson willfully violated § 13104(e)(1)(A) because she did not disclose this required information on her forms for several years," the complaint asserted. "The fact that she referenced her omission in 2022 and did not correct it as required is more indicia of her willfulness to not report this information."

"Given the risk for these potentially willful omissions to create conflicts of interest and recusal issues, and the need to ensure equal application of the law, the Conference should refer Justice Jackson to the Attorney General for her failure to disclose her husband’s consulting income and open an investigation into the potential private funding of her investiture celebration," asserted CRA President Russ Vought.

The complaint comes amid heightened scrutiny of Supreme Court justices following reports that have highlighted the justices' ethics disclosures, in particular focusing on Associate Justice Clarence Thomas's longstanding relationship with GOP megadonor Harlan Crow.

The Supreme Court issued its first ever code of conduct in November amid mounting pressure from the Senate.

Ben Whedon is an editor and reporter for Just the News. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter.