Associated Press/Susan Walsh
- On two occasions, the Supreme Court has declined to take on cases involving publishing conglomerate Penguin Random House.
- Both Sotomayor and Gorsuch have reported earning large paychecks from Penguin Random House for publishing books.
- Gorsuch failed to recuse himself from one of the cases. Sotomayor didn't recuse herself from both.
Two Supreme Court justices did not recuse themselves from cases that arose before the court involving their book publisher, Penguin Random House, according to a recent CNN report.
There have been two cases that came before the Supreme Court involving publishing conglomerate Penguin Random House. In both situations, the Supreme Court declined to take on the copyright infringement cases, allowing the publisher to win at a lower court level.
Liberal Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who was confirmed in 2009, was on the high court during both cases, which occurred in 2013 and 2019-2020. Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch was confirmed in 2017 and was also a member of the Supreme Court during the second case.
Sotomayor and Gorsuch had both signed major book deals with the publisher before the cases occurred, and both justices declined to recuse themselves from the cases involving Penguin Random House. Former Justice Stephen Breyer, who had reported receiving royalties from the publisher, recused himself from each of the cases.
According to Sotomayor's financial disclosures, as CNN reported, she's made approximately $3.6 million in royalties and advances for the several books she's published under Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, which is part of Penguin Random House.
As for Gorsuch, his financial disclosures note he's made at least $655,000 from Penguin Random House over the past few years from his book, "A Republic, If You Can Keep It."
Gorsuch and Sotomayor's decision not to recuse themselves from the two publishing cases has received fresh scrutiny after a series of reports from ProPublica revealed that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas accepted numerous lavish vacations and gifts from GOP megadonor Harlan Crow.
A key difference between the revelation about Gorsuch and Sotomayor compared with the recent news about Thomas, however, is the manner in which the news was collected. In Sotomayor and Gorsuch's case, the impropriety was discovered due to the diligent record-keeping of their earnings in their financial disclosures. In Thomas' case, however, his accepted gifts were only discovered due to whistleblowers and leakers coming forward to ProPublica.
Prior to the news of Sotomayor, Gorsuch, and Thomas' mishaps, a group of 15 Democratic senators declared they want to withhold $10 million from the Supreme Court's funding until the group high court institutes a public code of ethics.
Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen, the chair of a subcommittee in charge of the Supreme Court's budget, previously expressed support for the court to have a code of ethics and said he'd seek to use the "appropriations process to ensure that the Supreme Court adopts a code of conduct similar to that which applies to other members of the federal bench."
"The Supreme Court should have a code of ethics to govern the conduct of its members, and its refusal to adopt such standards has contributed to eroding public confidence in the highest court in the land," Van Hollen said. "It is unacceptable that the Supreme Court has exempted itself from the accountability that applies to all other members of our federal courts, and I believe Congress should act to remedy this problem."