Do Supreme Court justices bet on their own cases? A Congressman Would Like John Roberts to Answer This Question Z News

The Supreme Court has spent years lurching from one self-inflicted ethical crisis to another. There was Clarence Thomas quietly pocketing what Fix the Court estimated to be about $6 million in undisclosed gifts from billionaire Harlan Crow — luxury yachts, private jets, real estate deals and a relative’s private school tuition, all in secret. Ginni Thomas lobbied hard to overturn the 2020 election while her husband refused to recuse himself from matters directly involved in her activities. There was Sam Alito accepting a private jet from a billionaire hedge fund manager with cases before the Court, then declaring in the Wall Street Journal that “no provision in the Constitution gives them the power to regulate the Supreme Court — period.” There was Alito’s knighthood from a monarchist order – something the founders had explicitly forbidden – which he apparently thought was a good thing. And there was the Court’s final response to all of this: a toothless code of conduct, with no enforcement mechanism, written in a way that retroactively excused the worst of what Thomas had already done, and conflict-checking software that took 827 days to implement.

There is now a new potential conflict of interest at the door of the Court.

Rope. Greg Landsman (D-OH) sent a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts last week, raising a question that, once heard, is truly hard to shake: In a world where anyone with a phone can bet real money on the outcome of Supreme Court cases, what’s stopping people who know how do these cases come out when doing the same?

The problem, according to Landsman’s letter, is that even though the existing code of conduct *should* barely cover it, and not explicitly enough to be meaningful.

Prediction markets have exploded. Monthly trading volume on Kalshi and Polymarket has grown from less than $5 billion in September 2025 to around $24 billion in April 2026. And the contracts available aren’t exactly abstract. Users have been able to bet on the outcomes of cases such as birthright, whether states can count mail-in ballots after Election Day, the president’s ability to fire members of independent agencies, and the participation of transgender athletes in high school sports. They can also bet on if and when a specific judge will retire, and who their successor might be.

This is a menu that would be very interesting for someone who already knows the answers.

Judges know how they vote before their opinions are made public. Paralegals know how cases are done. Court assistants know when retirement is imminent. The inside information benefit here is not theoretical – it is structural and benefits a small, specific group of people at One First Street NE.

The existing Code of Conduct for Judges technically covers this: Canon 4(D)(4) states that a judge “should not disclose or use non-public information acquired in the exercise of his or her judicial duties for any purpose unrelated to the judge’s official duties.” The code for paralegals and other court employees contains similar language prohibiting the use of confidential information for personal gain. So one could argue that this is already prohibited.

But Landsman’s letter argues that technically already prohibited is not enough – partly because the ban is not explicit, and partly because the risk of conflict of interest is not limited to betting obviously linked to cases. As the letter says, the ban should cover “not only betting on Court-related outcomes, but also participation in these markets in their entirety, as it is not always clear whether a bet is based on publicly available information or non-public information acquired through government services.” Someone who knows a judge is about to retire might bet on retirement deals. Someone who understands the internal atmosphere of the Court could have an informational advantage on a number of market contracts.

The reform advocacy group Fix the Court had already reported this problem in May, sending a letter to Judge Robert Dow, advisor to the chief justice and director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, calling for a branch-wide ban covering both the SCOTUS and lower federal courts. This letter was abandoned the day after the Senate on April 30 banned its own members and employees from participating in the prediction market. The House is currently debating it.

Which brings us to the delightfully recursive twist buried in Landsman’s letter. There is a case relating to the regulation of the prediction market that could go to the Supreme Court. The prospect of judges ruling on regulating the very platforms they could theoretically bet on, while the public watches live odds updates on Kalshi, is the kind of conflict of interest that writes its own punchline.

The letter asks Roberts to “proactively inform the public” that judges and staff do not currently participate in prediction markets and to commit to an explicit ban in the future. He also cites precedents in which the Court has issued such voluntary statements — a 1993 statement on recusal policy, the 2023 Statement of Ethical Principles, and individual recusal letters from Justices including Gorsuch and Alito — as evidence that Roberts has the mechanism to do so if he chooses.

The question is whether he wants it. This Court has demonstrated a fairly consistent approach to external calls for ethics reform: recognize them minimally, act on them minimally, and wait for the news cycle to continue. A letter from a Democratic minority member, no matter how well reasoned, is not historically the kind of thing that prompts Roberts to act with urgency.

The Court’s ethical problem is not going to resolve itself. If Roberts is looking for a truly easy victory — a way to preempt a problem before it metastasizes into a scandal rather than reacting to a scandal after the fact — that’s a pretty painless place to start. He just needs to say the obvious thing. But uh, I wouldn’t hold your breath.