Justice Samuel Alito on Monday recused from a major climate case set to be heard next week, stepping aside with no explanation after previously participating in the vote to take up the dispute. Alito has long held financial interests in the oil and gas sector, and as one of the only justices to own individual...
Page A5From§Eachthe early bird edition — 28 September 2026
THE RECUSAL
Alito voted to hear the oil case, then quit it a week before arguments, no reason given.
As it ran on the front
Start with the vote, because that's where the file starts. Justice Samuel Alito was one of the votes to grant certiorari in the Boulder climate case — the one that could decide whether cities and counties can sue oil companies for climate damage at all. At the time of that vote, per the reporting, Alito held individual stock in oil and gas companies, one of the only justices on the bench to hold individual positions rather than funds.
September 15th, two weeks before he stepped back from anything: Alito and Justice Thomas filed a sharp dissent when the rest of the Court kept a new set of mail-in ballot rules blocked, calling the majority's move a "Hail Mary." Fully seated, fully engaged, writing in the plural against his own colleagues. Nothing about that week reads like a justice easing toward the exits.…
…(cont) The docket was already trending one direction before arguments even opened.
September 25th, three days before: coverage sorted the term into three cases — guns, voting, climate — as the term's test of whether the Court reads the law as written. Climate sat on that list. The recusal had not yet been filed.
Monday, September 28th, one week before arguments: Alito recuses. The coverage splits on why. One outlet calls it a reversal after "pressure from left-wing groups." Another calls it a reversal after "calls" over the stock. A third ties it plainly to reporting that detailed his oil and gas holdings.
All together now — read the order itself, because the order is the whole story. It runs one sentence. It cites zero rules. It gives zero reasons. It arrives exactly one week before the Court hears arguments on whether his former stock's industry can be sued for the weather. The stock is gone from the file. The vote to hear the case is not.
“This is the whole trick with recusal — it's not an ethics rule, it's a timer he sets himself. He votes to take the case, sits on it right up until the reporters do the math on his portfolio, then steps out with a form that doesn't say why, and the vote he already cast stays on the board. The oil companies didn't need him in the room for the last inning — they needed him in the room for the first one, and he was.”
“Look, recusal is the system working — a justice sees a conflict, he steps aside, that's the ethical outcome everyone should want, and frankly the timing is nobody's business but his own. Did I say "nobody's business," on a public docket, in a case about whether the public can sue oil companies? That doesn't sound like me. The point is, he stepped back, isn't that what the critics wanted — well, some of it.”
The receipts
Conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito will no longer participate in a major climate case after facing calls because of his stock holdings in oil companies.
The Supreme Court will soon hear arguments in the major climate change lawsuit between two energy companies and the city and county of Boulder, Colorado.
Justice Samuel Alito announced Monday he would be recusing himself from a major Supreme Court climate change case a week before oral arguments, after facing pressure from left-wing groups to do so. Alito, who has served on the Supreme Court since 2006 after being appointed by then-President George W. Bush, did not offer an explanation […]
‘will not continue to participate’
· Court strikes down New York law that sought to hold fossil fuel companies liable for climate change from the morgue, 1 Sep 2026
· Alito and Thomas slam Supreme Court upholding ‘Hail Mary’ block in dissent on Trump’s mail-in ballot rule from the morgue, 15 Sep 2026
· Guns. Voting. Climate. Three Supreme Court cases will make or break originalism from the morgue, 25 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.