WASHINGTON (Reuters)—Liberal Democratic U.S. representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) has introduced articles of impeachment against conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, her office said on Wednesday.
The effort stands no chance of advancing in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. To remove an official through this process, the House must vote to impeach and the Senate then must vote to convict.
Democrats for years have criticized the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, over rulings that advanced causes popular on the right. These have included overturning Roe v. Wade, expanding gun rights, and rejecting affirmative action in collegiate admissions. Ocasio-Cortez's impeachment filing is in response to the Court's recent ruling that former presidents have broad immunity from prosecution for official acts in office, a decision favoring former president Donald Trump.
"Today’s ruling represents an assault on American democracy. It is up to Congress to defend our nation from this authoritarian capture," the Squad member posted on X the day of the ruling, claiming the High Court has a "corruption crisis."
Ocasio-Cortez said in a statement Wednesday that Thomas and Alito's "pattern of refusal to recuse from consequential matters before the court in which they hold widely documented financial and personal entanglements constitutes a grave threat to American rule of law."
Some congressional Democrats have accused Thomas and Alito, two of the court's most conservative justices, of ethical lapses.
Activists criticized Thomas following reports that he failed to disclose accepting travel and lodging from a wealthy benefactor and that his wife was involved in efforts to overturn Trump's 2020 election loss. Thomas has said that he regarded the travel he accepted as personal hospitality not subject to disclosure requirements. The Court implemented a new ethics code to address it last year.
Alito similarly faced criticism after the revelation that flags associated with Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 results were flown outside the justice's homes in Virginia and New Jersey. Alito has said it was his wife, not him, who flew the flags.
(Reporting by Moira Warburton and Makini Brice in Washington; Editing by Scott Malone and Will Dunham)