Sen. Lindsey Graham, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, plans to block Senate Democrats’ attempt to unanimously pass a Supreme Court ethics bill on the Senate floor Wednesday.
“I’m going to protest,” Graham told NBC News.
The South Carolina senator’s comments came after Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said earlier Tuesday that he would require unanimous consent to pass the Supreme Court ethics legislation the panel introduced last July.
The South Carolina Republican’s objection means the bill cannot move forward because any senator can block the inquiry.
It’s unclear whether the measure will come up for a vote in the normal process, but Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he is considering it.
Even before Graham’s comments, Democrats doubted the legislation would move forward. “I think I know the outcome, but we’re going to go through practice to make sure both sides are on the record,” Durbin told reporters Tuesday afternoon.
The Democratic-led Judiciary Committee advanced the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal and Transparency Act on a party-line vote nearly a year ago, but it cannot break a filibuster on the Senate floor without 60 votes. Democrats have 51 members and no Republicans on the bill.
In a press release about the vote, Democrats said the vote follows “numerous apparent ethical violations by Supreme Court justices that point to the need for ethics reform.”
A spokeswoman for the Supreme Court did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday night.
Justice Clarence Thomas disclosed in his annual financial disclosures that in 2019 he and his billionaire friend Harlan Crow took a couple of trips to Bali and the private Bohemian Grove club in California. was released last week. It was ProPublica previously reported The previously undisclosed luxury travel of Thomas and other justices in a series of stories last year raised questions about the high court’s ethics.
The bill would give the court 180 days to adopt and publish a code of conduct that would allow the public to file ethics complaints, which would then be reviewed by a randomly selected panel of lower court judges. It will also set new rules for the disclosure of gifts and travel.
The legislation would also require justices to publicly explain any decision to dismiss.
Durbin was last month called To Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito self-abnegation then on January 6, 2021, from a pair of cases involving the Capitol riots The New York Times reported on this that a inverted American flag Displayed in front of his home a few days after the Capitol riot. After Alito refused to go away of those cases.