Democratic lawmakers question new US judicial financial disclosure policy

By Nate Raymond

Dec 27 (Reuters) - Two Democratic lawmakers in Congress are seeking further information about a new U.S. judiciary policy governing when U.S. Supreme Court justices and other federal judges must publicly disclose travel-related gifts they that they had previously failed to report.

In a letter to the head of the judiciary's administrative arm released on Thursday, U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and U.S. Representative Hank Johnson expressed concern over the fact that the new financial disclosure policy, made public last week, did not require disclosure of travel-related gifts before 2022.

Under regulations adopted in March 2023 by the U.S. Judicial Conference, the federal judiciary's policymaking body, judges and justices were advised that gifts of transportation that substitute for commercial transportation, such as a flight on a private jet, could not be deemed a form of "personal hospitality" exempt from disclosure.

The Judicial Conference adopted those regulations following reports by ProPublica and others that Justice Clarence Thomas, a member of the Supreme Court's 6-3 conservative majority, had not reported gifts including luxury travel from wealthy Texas businessman and Republican donor Harlan Crow.

Thomas has said that he had been advised he did not have to report that type of "personal hospitality" and said he would do so going forward starting with his 2022 annual report, which was filed in August 2023.

The lawmakers' letter concerned a new policy adopted by the Judicial Conference's Committee on Financial Disclosure that was made public in a Dec. 18 report on the Judicial Conference's September closed-door meeting.

Under the new policy, judges and justices who discover errors or omissions in their financial disclosure reports must promptly amend reports filed in the past six years.

But the committee determined that, while reports would also need to be amended if gifts of transportation that were omitted or misreported, it would only require judges and justices to so for the 2022 filing year onward.

The committee cited "confusion arising from past guidance" as to why it would not require financial disclosure reports for 2018 through 2021 to likewise be amended to include any unreported travel gifts.

Whitehouse and Johnson, who are respectively the top Democrats on the court subcommittees of the Senate Judiciary Committee and House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, said they saw no confusion warranting such an exemption.

"The policy seems to acknowledge that the Ethics in Government Act always required disclosure of gifts of transportation, because such gifts do not fall within the plain language of the statute's personal hospitality exemption limited to food, lodging, and entertainment," they wrote, citing a 1978 law mandating financial disclosures for government officials.

The lawmakers requested further details on the new policy, whose text has not been released publicly.

The lawmakers addressed their letter to U.S. District Judge Robert Conrad, the director the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. A spokesperson for the Administrative Office declined to comment.

Read more:

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(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; editing by Brendan Pierson)

((Nate.Raymond@thomsonreuters.com and Twitter @nateraymond; 347-243-6917; Reuters Messaging: nate.raymond.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))