The revelation that Amy Coney Barrett sold her private residence to a member of a religious group shortly after being sworn in at the Supreme Court has raised questions about the conservative justice and the high court, whose transparency and ethics have recently been scrutinized.
Barrett had personal ties with the University of Notre Dame's Religious Liberty Initiative, according to a CNN report. The group, "informed by the Catholic tradition" of the college says it aims to "promote religious freedom for all people," according to its website.
Newsweek has contacted the Supreme Court for comment by email.
The group has been found to forge ties with justices to gain favor with the court, including paying for Justice Samuel Alito to travel to Rome to deliver a speech after the overturning of Roe v. Wade last year. The group's legal clinic has filed a series of "friend-of-the-court" briefs in religious liberty cases before the Supreme Court since it was founded in 2020—many of which Alito supported.
Barrett, a Donald Trump appointee and a former Notre Dame professor, was found to still be linked to the group after being appointed. Accountable.us, a left-leaning non-profit group, discovered that the justice sold her private residence to a recently-hired Notre Dame professor—Brendan Wilson—only a few months after being sworn in to the Supreme Court in 2020.
Democrats had opposed her confirmation process, questioning the impact of her religious beliefs—Barrett has described herself as a "faithful Catholic"—on her approach to the role, and contesting her conservative views.
It's not the first time that Barrett comes under fire for her ties with Notre Dame either. In October 2020, Barrett was alleged to have failed to disclose some events at the Catholic university on her Senate paperwork.
With the sale of her home in South Bend, Indiana, to Wilson for $905,000, Barrett can be considered the third Supreme Court justice to have made money from property transactions with conservative figures who are members of legal advocacy groups tied to the high court, per CNN's report.
Her actions don't appear to violate any of the Supreme Court's ethics rules, experts told the news network but suggested that there should be more transparency surrounding the actions of justices.
"The endless drip of shady and corrupt Supreme Court dealings just further underscores the need for reform," said Accountable.us president Kyle Herrig said in a statement. "Every federal judge is bound to an ethics code requiring them to avoid behavior that so much as looks improper, except for Supreme Court justices."
He added: "Chief Justice (John) Roberts has the power to change that, but so far he hasn't shown the courage. If he fails to do his job, Congress must do theirs."
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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Giulia Carbonaro is a Newsweek Reporter based in London, U.K. Her focus is on U.S. and European politics, global affairs ... Read more
