Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan is facing calls for a Senate Judiciary Committee investigation after a coalition of conservative legal organizations accused her of failing to recuse herself from a major climate change case expected to be argued before the high court next term, alleging she publicly endorsed legal theories central to the dispute.
In a letter sent Monday to Senate Judiciary Committee leaders, the coalition urged lawmakers to investigate whether Kagan violated federal ethics rules by participating in Suncor Energy v. Boulder County.
The coalition argued that Kagan compromised her impartiality by writing the foreword to the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, which included a climate science chapter that was later criticized by Congress and Republican attorneys general as biased and was eventually removed.
Suncor Energy v. Boulder County asks whether Colorado local governments can use state law to hold oil and gas companies financially liable for their alleged contributions to climate change.
In her foreword, Kagan wrote that judges would increasingly confront lawsuits involving "climate science" and encouraged them to use the manual as a resource for evaluating scientific evidence.