In a trio of letters made public on Thursday, Robert J. Conrad Jr., the secretary to the U.S. Judicial Conference, told Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) that the body would not act on their referral request. The lawmakers initially sought a Biden DOJ investigation back in April 2023 after ProPublica released a series of stories raising ethical concerns about the luxury travel gifts Thomas received from his friend, real estate mogul Harlan Crow. 

“The Judicial Conference does not superintend the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States,” Conrad wrote in response to their request to have Thomas referred to Attorney General Merrick Garland, adding that the justices have voluntarily agreed to comply with financial reporting requirements applicable to other federal judges.

Conrad also said there were “constitutional questions” about whether the Judicial Conference could do anything that the lawmakers were asking them to do without an explicit declaration by Congress in the governing statute at issue, the authority to refer judges to the DOJ for investigations into whether they “willfully” violated their reporting obligations.

“There is reason to doubt that the Conference has any such authority” over Supreme Court justices, Conrad said, noting that “one would expect Congress at a minimum to state any such directive clearly.”

While the conference oversees financial disclosure rules for federal judges, its authority over Supreme Court justices remains a largely untouched issue that has left legal experts in a state of perpetual debate, even causing some progressive advocates such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasia Cortez (D-NY) to call for Thomas’s impeachment.

At the height of the ethics debate surrounding the high court, Justice Samuel Alito told the Wall Street Journal, “No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court—period.” Conversely, Justice Elena Kagan has publicly said she thinks Congress does have the power to regulate the high court.

In November 2023, the high court ultimately adopted an independent ethics code, which is not enforceable by the conference, a move that dissatisfied some Democratic critics. The justices maintained in a statement signed by all nine that they had always followed the same guidance bound to lower court judges.

Democratic outrage over ethics on the judiciary has prompted some conservative advocates to paint the accusations as contrived political efforts to discredit the Supreme Court in light of its 6-3 Republican-appointed majority, which was cemented with the help of President-elect Donald Trump during his first term in office.

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In December 2023, the Center for Renewing America founder Russ Vought, who is Trump’s pick to be director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote a complaint to the conference over Biden-appointed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson‘s “willful and illegal” failure to disclose her husband’s medical malpractice consulting income.

Conrad responded Thursday, affirming that like Thomas, Jackson also amended her disclosures in light of a previous failure to report her husband’s income, negating any need to address the matter further.