{"id":7371,"date":"2021-01-12T21:00:02","date_gmt":"2021-01-12T21:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=149209"},"modified":"2021-01-12T21:00:02","modified_gmt":"2021-01-12T21:00:02","slug":"justice-amy-coney-barrett-should-join-colleague-in-recusal-due-to-deep-ties-to-fossil-fuel-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/01\/12\/justice-amy-coney-barrett-should-join-colleague-in-recusal-due-to-deep-ties-to-fossil-fuel-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"Justice Amy Coney Barrett Should Join Colleague in Recusal Due to Deep Ties to Fossil Fuel Industry"},"content":{"rendered":"
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WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court is slated to take up a procedural issue on Tuesday, January 19 related to a lawsuit brought by the city of Baltimore seeking to hold oil and gas companies accountable for the climate change harms their products have caused. Justice Samuel Alito, who owns shares in ConocoPhillips and other oil and gas companies, has already recused himself. Given her connections to the oil and gas industry, Justice Amy Coney Barrett should do the same.<\/p>\n

To promote public confidence in the court system, U.S. law provides for justices to recuse themselves in an array of circumstances, including whenever their \u201cimpartiality might reasonably be questioned.\u201d Unlike lower federal court judges, who must abide by strict ethical rules designed to avoid conflicts of interest, or even appearances of such conflicts, Supreme Court justices make their own recusal decisions on a case-by-case basis.<\/p>\n

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\u201cBarrett posing as an impartial judge in this hearing for climate accountability is about as safe as the Big Bad Wolf giving Little Red Riding Hood directions to Grandma\u2019s house,\u201d said Lindsay Meiman, U.S. communications manager at 350.org<\/a>. \u201cWe demand Barrett immediately recuse herself of any and all cases concerning climate and the fossil fuel industry, starting with the upcoming Baltimore vs. Big Oil hearing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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\u201cWe urge Justice Barrett to heed both precedent and common sense and join Justice Alito in recusing herself from this case brought against Big Oil,\u201d said Kathy Mulvey, accountability campaign director in the Climate and Energy Program at UCS. \u201cIt\u2019s well known that Justice Barrett\u2019s father worked for decades as an attorney at Shell Oil, a named defendant in the case. He also played an active role in the American Petroleum Institute, the industry\u2019s main U.S. lobby group, which is funded by numerous defendants in the Baltimore suit and has submitted an amicus curiae brief in support of their petition to the Supreme Court. These deep and long-standing conflicts of interest have led Justice Barrett to recuse herself from cases regarding Shell in the past. Her obligation to judicial impartiality should lead her to do the same here. Baltimore residents deserve access to impartial justice for the climate harms they are suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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\u201cThe Baltimore Peoples Climate Movement believes that in order to ensure a fair process, a justice with such significant connections to the fossil fuel industry must recuse herself,\u201d said Nabeehah Azeez, an organizer with the BPCM. \u201cBaltimore City is already feeling the impacts of climate change in severe storms and flooding, sewage backups and overflows, heatwaves, and polluted air. Baltimore deserves a fair trial on the basis of climate justice.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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\u201cConsistent compliance with the recusal statute is critical for the proper functioning of our court system and our democracy,\u201d said Kassie Siegel, director of the Climate Law Institute at the Center for Biological Diversity. \u201cGiven her father\u2019s long-term work for Shell and the American Petroleum Institute, Justice Barrett should recuse herself from this case and all future cases involving the oil industry.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2013 The U.S. Supreme Court is slated to take up a procedural issue on Tuesday, January 19 related to a lawsuit brought by the city of Baltimore\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7371"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7371"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7372,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7371\/revisions\/7372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}