Justice Alito declined to recuse from Supreme Court's Suncor climate case cert grant despite fossil-fuel holdings and past recusals

On February 23, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in Suncor Energy (U.S.A.) Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County (No. 25-170), agreeing to review the Colorado Supreme Court's ruling that let Boulder's public-nuisance suit against Suncor and ExxonMobil over climate damages proceed in state court; the Court's order also directed the parties to brief whether it has jurisdiction to hear the case at all. Justice Samuel Alito participated in the decision to grant review, and the docket carries no notation that he recused.

Alito holds up to $15,000 in ConocoPhillips stock and between $15,000 and $50,000 in Phillips 66 stock — both companies are defendants in parallel state climate suits whose outcome the Boulder ruling would help decide — plus an ETF whose third-largest holding is ExxonMobil, a named party in the case. He had recused himself from an earlier Boulder petition in 2023 and from a related 2025 petition raising the same preemption question in Honolulu's climate suit. He did not recuse from the February 2026 grant and has not publicly explained the change.

Updates

2026-05-12 — Watchdog coalition asked Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate Alito [5, 6]

A coalition led by True North Research and the Revolving Door Project, joined by the Center for Biological Diversity, League of Conservation Voters, and Alliance for Justice, wrote to the top members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, arguing Alito's participation in the Suncor case was undermining public confidence in the Court's impartiality and asking the committee to investigate whether his conduct violated the Court's ethics code.

2026-05 — SCOTUS said Alito recusal in 2023 was inadvertent, not required now [4]

A Supreme Court spokeswoman told NBC News that Alito was not required to recuse because his most recent financial disclosure showed no direct stock ownership in Suncor or ExxonMobil and that the Court's legal counsel had advised him accordingly. She said his 2023 recusal from the earlier Boulder petition had been "inadvertent," a byproduct of that petition being considered alongside other cases in which he did hold a direct financial interest, not a deliberate step-back from the Boulder litigation itself.

2026-08-11 — Court Accountability found Alito gained up to $2.9M from oil and gas [8, 9]

The judicial watchdog group Court Accountability published an analysis of Alito's 2005–2024 financial disclosures finding he gained between $390,000 and $2.9 million from oil and gas interests, most of it from a Grady County, Oklahoma mineral interest held by his wife and leased in 2022 to Citizen Energy, later acquired by Validus Energy — majority-held by Elliott Investment Management, which holds more than 52 million Suncor shares and whose founder, Paul Singer, paid for an undisclosed 2008 private jet flight Alito took.

2026-08 — Court scheduled oral argument for Oct 5, 2026, new term opening day [8, 9]

The Supreme Court set oral argument in the case for October 5, 2026, the opening day of its new term; the Trump administration, siding with the oil companies, requested 10 minutes of argument time.