Philip Anschutz has hosted rightwing justice at resort and stands to benefit if court strips power from federal regulatory agencies
Two days before oral arguments in a US supreme court case set to have a major impact on federal health and environmental regulation, a leading government watchdog called on Neil Gorsuch to recuse himself over close links to a billionaire oil baron who has hosted the rightwing justice at a mountain resort called Eagles Nest for weekends of dove shooting and who stands to benefit from the ruling at hand.
“Not only would overturning Chevron deference strip power from federal agencies, harming their ability to serve everyday Americans – but now, we know billionaire oil baron Philip Anschutz would score big from a favourable ruling by his friend on the high court,” said Caroline Ciccone, president of Accountable.US.
“It’s far past time for these justices to stop putting their billionaire pals over Americans. Recusal from cases where they have glaring conflicts of interest is the very least they can do to restore some semblance of credibility and integrity to our supreme court.”
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But the case has much wider implications because it is thought likely to remove the Chevron deference, a principle named for a 1984 case involving the eponymous oil giant which established that federal agencies have the discretion to issue regulatory rules without congressional approval.
The joint statement that they didn’t want any enforceable ethics rules was signed by all of them.
That means that, while not anywhere near as obviously corrupt and otherwise awful as the Federalist Society ones, the rest of the court is also against transparency and being held to a higher standard than a pinky swear, which isn’t a great sign…
The joint ethics statement was a milquetoast pile of nothing for sure, but it was better than absolutely nothing and lets the Dem nominated justices point out that they believe in ethics with the chance to actually behave ethically while the Republican nominated justices can be hypocrites while violating ethics.
Before the joint ethics statement there wasn’t anything to enforce because there wasn’t even a clear expectation of behavior. Now that there is something, even if it is useless on its own, there is something in writing that could be used as proof that there are some expectations for the justices that could be used for a possible impeachment of corrupt justices.
A pinky swear is better than nothing when arguing intent, even if a bunch of justices signed it because there is no explicit enforcement of pinky swears.
Not really, since that’s what almost precisely what they already did separately when they were sworn in.
To go through the trouble of affirming what you’ve already affirmed while insisting on no enforcement or consequences in response to a public demand for enforcement and consequences is borderline suspicious behavior…