Alito Made Millions on Fossil Fuels But Won’t Recuse From Exxon Case

Alito, who is the only Supreme Court justice with holdings in energy companies, has refused to step back from the upcoming petition brought by fossil fuel giants Suncor and ExxonMobil. He previously recused himself from a petition from the same companies in 2023,. The new case will determine whether municipal and state governments can seek damages for decades of Big Oil deception regarding the climate harms these companies knew their fossil fuel products would cause—a make or break decision for Alito’s second stream of income.

Most of Alito’s financial gains came from property in Grady County, Oklahoma, in which his wife, Martha Ann, holds a mineral interest. Alito has reported the value of the plot between $100,000 and $250,000, but Graves noted that one of Alito’s family members had sold an adjacent plot for $800,000, suggesting that the jurist could be underreporting the land’s value.

In 2022, Alito’s wife agreed to lease the plot of land to Citizen Energy, a private oil and gas company. No reporting or public doblockents indicate that a well has been drilled on this property, but a lease agreement shows that the owners would have received three-sixteenths of the profit from any extracted oil.