Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was not immune from controversy in her first full year on the high court, making headlines for her opinions and actions in 2023.
In a year when the Supreme Court was under heightened scrutiny over ethics concerns for justices, especially Justice Clarence Thomas, Jackson also found her ethics under the microscope. Here are three times the newest Supreme Court justice ignited controversy in the past 12 months.
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Disclosure errors under Senate scrutiny
During a hearing in which Democratic senators questioned Thomas's ethics after reports emerged about undisclosed trips paid by Republican donor Harlan Crow, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) shined a spotlight on transparency gaps from Jackson. He discussed her disclosure filings and questioned why those were not receiving similar scrutiny from Democrats.
"Justice Jackson made multiple amendments three days after President Biden nominated her. Not one senator brought that up during her confirmation hearings. Not one of my colleagues here walked into her hearings with the buckets of mud that they've thrown against Justice Thomas. Not one," Kennedy said during the Senate hearing in May.
Jackson disclosed in September 2022 that she had “inadvertently omitted" her husband's income from consulting on medical malpractice cases, along with new disclosures about reimbursements for travel and board memberships, per Bloomberg.
Dissent on affirmative action decision
In her dissent of the June ruling on Students for Fair Admissions v.Harvard, Jackson accused the majority opinion, which ruled affirmative action policies in college admissions are unconstitutional, of having an oblivious attitude toward race.
"With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces 'colorblindness for all' by legal fiat," she wrote in the dissent. "But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life. And having so detached itself from this country’s actual past and present experiences, the Court has now been lured into interfering with the crucial work that UNC and other institutions of higher learning are doing to solve America’s real-world problems."
Thomas, who joined the 6-3 majority, issued a scathing rebuke of Jackson's dissent in his 58-page concurrence.
“So Justice Jackson supplies the link herself: the legacy of slavery and the nature of inherited wealth. This, she claims, locks blacks into a seemingly perpetual inferior caste," Thomas wrote. "Such a view is irrational; it is an insult to individual achievement and cancerous to young minds seeking to push through barriers, rather than consign themselves to permanent victimhood."
Accused of ethics violation
An ethics complaint filed against Jackson by the conservative Center for Renewing America earlier this month alleged that she "repeatedly failed to disclose that her husband received income from medical malpractice consulting fees."
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"We know this by Justice Jackson’s own admission in her amended disclosure form for 2020, filed when she was nominated to the Supreme Court, that 'some of my previously filed reports inadvertently omitted' her husband’s income from ‘consulting on medical malpractice cases,’" the letter to the Judicial Conference read, alleging an ethics violation.
The letter urges the Judicial Conference to refer the complaint to Attorney General Merrick Garland to open an investigation.