Justice Samuel Alito said his recusal from a major climate lawsuit against Suncor Energy was the prudent step even though Court lawyers told him it was not required.
Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito stepped aside from Suncor Energy v. County Commissioners of Boulder County on Tuesday and, a day later, told Bloomberg why he did it. Family oil and gas stock holdings, he said, made the move the careful choice.
The Court’s own legal office had already told him recusal was not required. Federal law generally calls for a judge to step back when the judge or a spouse holds a financial interest in a party. Alito still walked away, leaving eight justices to hear the case and opening the door to a 4-4 split that would leave a Colorado Supreme Court ruling for Boulder’s lawsuit in place.
Daily Caller reporting laid out the sequence and the family energy trail that put the justice back under the ethics spotlight days before oral arguments.
Alito described the call as a difficult judgment. He did not treat it as a forced exit.
"Taking into account the particular arguments that were made on both sides here, I thought that recusal was the prudent step,"
he told Bloomberg’s Greg Stohr on Wednesday.
The justice tied the decision to how his household invests. His wife prefers to hold individual shares rather than dump them for the sake of optics.
"She wants to hold on to individual stock, and so we have stock holdings in some companies in the oil and gas field,"
Alito said.
That preference traces back more than a decade. Martha-Ann Alito’s father, Bobby Gene Bomgardner, died in 2012. The family inherited dozens of stocks, including Chevron shares, investment accounts, and mineral rights in Oklahoma, according to a 2013 Associated Press account cited in the coverage. Alito has since recused from dozens of matters involving companies whose shares arrived through that inheritance.
In 2022, Martha-Ann Alito leased oil and gas rights covering 160 acres in Grady County, Oklahoma, to Citizen Energy III. She is entitled to three-sixteenths of the proceeds from oil and gas produced. She holds no ownership stake in Citizen itself.
Validus Energy later acquired Citizen in a deal valued at more than $2 billion, a transaction Reuters reported and the same coverage flagged. Elliott Investment Management backs Validus. Elliott also held a large position in Suncor itself, roughly 52.7 million shares worth $3.48 billion in March 2026, cut to about 29.5 million shares worth $1.58 billion by June.
Suncor, Citizen, Validus, Elliott, and the Supreme Court Public Information Office did not immediately respond to comment requests.
Critics immediately folded the recusal into a longer campaign against the justice. Billionaire Paul Singer, tied to Elliott, previously flew Alito on a private jet to Alaska for a 2008 fishing trip, reporting first highlighted by ProPublica. Alito did not disclose that flight.
In a June 2023 Wall Street Journal op-ed, Alito rejected the claim that the Singer connection demanded recusal in the cases ProPublica listed.
"I had no obligation to recuse in any of the cases that ProPublica cites. First, even if I had been aware of Mr. Singer’s connection to the entities involved in those cases, recusal would not have been required or appropriate,"
he wrote then.
The pattern is familiar. Activists treat every energy holding and every old social tie as proof the Court is captured, then demand structural “reform” when a justice does step aside. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich posted on X on September 30 that Alito recused “after ethics watchdogs uncovered his fossil fuel stockholdings” and called on Congress to enact “real SCOTUS reform.”
That is the political product. A justice follows the cautious path his own lawyers said he did not have to take, and the left still treats it as evidence the institution is broken. Readers tracking Alito’s decision to step aside from the climate case already know the fight is larger than one docket entry.
Oral arguments were set to begin one week after the Tuesday recusal. With Alito out, the bench is short a vote. A tie would leave the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision allowing Boulder’s suit to proceed untouched. Energy companies facing county-level climate litigation have every reason to watch that math.
Boulder’s case sits inside a broader push to haul oil producers into court over climate policy that elected lawmakers will not pass. The County Commissioners of Boulder County are the named party opposite Suncor. The Colorado high court cleared the path for the lawsuit to move forward. Alito’s absence does not revise that posture; it freezes it if the remaining justices split evenly.
George W. Bush appointed Alito to the Court. The justice has given no sign he plans to leave the bench, a point underscored when Alito confirmed he will stay on the Supreme Court amid retirement chatter.
Life on the Court already carries real personal strain for the justices and their families, a reality that surfaced when Barrett told Congress her young son found her bulletproof vest. Ethics theater does not lighten that load.
Alito did not pretend the household holds no oil and gas exposure. He stated it plainly. He also stated that the Court’s legal office cleared him to sit and that he chose prudence anyway. That is the opposite of a cover-up. It is a justice drawing a brighter line than the statute required because the arguments cut close enough to make staying look contested.
The same week the Court is deep in other high-stakes fights, including cases where the Trump administration has urged the justices to allow transgender military policy enforcement. The institution’s docket is not a seminar on fossil fuels alone.
What the record shows is narrower and harder for the reform chorus to swallow. Inherited mineral rights in Oklahoma, a 2022 lease with a royalty slice and no company ownership stake, later corporate deals linking Citizen to Validus and Elliott, and Elliott’s own large Suncor position in 2026 all sat in public view. Alito recused. He explained the call. He did not surrender the point that the law did not compel it.
Recent terms have already shown how quickly the Court’s orders reshape national fights, from election rules to executive power, including when the Supreme Court cleared Trump’s mail-ballot executive order. One justice’s recusal in a county climate suit will not revise that larger map.
Left-wing activists wanted a scalp and a legislative revise of the Court. They got a recusal the justice himself called prudent, paired with a public account of why his family still holds energy stock. Taxpayers and lawful energy producers still face the lawsuit machine either way.
When a justice follows the cautious path and still gets branded the problem, the real target is not the holding. It is the Court that will not rubber-stamp climate policy by lawsuit.