This is Bloomberg Law with June Brusso from Bloomberg Radio. Google is back on trial just one month after losing a landmark ruling finding that it illegally monopolizes Internet search. Now the Justice Department is alleging that Google monopolizes the six hundred and seventy seven billion dollar advertising market. Joining me is Bloomberg Anti Trust reporter Leah Nylan, who's covering the trial and joins us from the courthouse tell us about the government's case against Google.
So, the Justice Department alleges that Google has illegally monopolized the ad tech tool market. This is a market that most consumers are probably not familiar with at all, because it is sort of the plumbing behind online advertising, and so it's the way that websites put, you know, ads up for sale and advertiseers buy them.
So it's a.
Lot of technically complicated stuff, but it is the way that Google makes billions of dollars each year. And so the government alleges that they have monopolized this market by buying up some rival competitors who are going to offer different products, controlling the way that their customers are able to interact with rivals. And changing sort.
Of the rules of the game.
Midstream, because a lot of these ads are actually sold auctions, and Google controls that auction and therefore can change some of the rules behind how those auctions work.
In the opening statement, the Justice Department's attorney said, what we have is a trifecta of monopolies here. What did she mean.
Yeah, they're actually alleging that there are three separate monopolies that Google has. One of them is on what they call the publisher side. That means some of the tools that are used by websites to help put their adspace up for sale. Those are called the ad server market.
They have alleged that there is a.
Market for the advertising exchanges. These are just like a stock exchange, is where the advertisements are bought and sold. And the third one is the advertiser side tools.
This is the tools that.
The advertisers use to put their ads out there for sale.
Google's attorney what did they stress in their openings?
Yeah.
Google stressed a couple different things in their opening statement. The first one was that, you know, the market, in their view, is very competitive. They compete against a lot of different companies in a lot of different types of advertising, and they say that the Justice Department has sort of gerrymandered a market here to sort of bring their case. So, the Justice Department alleges that Google has monopolized the open
web display advertising. This is the display ads, the sort of the things that you see on like blogs or news websites, sports websites, things like that.
They often appear at the top of the page.
Or like beside the content that you're reading. And Google argues that there are lots of other types of advertising. You know, you can advertise on social media, you can advertise in video, you can advertise all sorts of places, and it's weird, in their opinion for the Justice Department to be focused in on this one. They have two other arguments legally.
One of them is.
That they don't actually have an obligation under the antitrust law to do business with anyone. So if they decide that they don't want to make the tools that they use for advertising work with.
Other people's tools, that that's completely fine.
And then their third argument is that we should really think about this not as open web display advertising, but as a transaction, almost like a credit card.
And under the law the.
Supreme Court had made of rulings about how to think about markets in what they call two side transaction platforms, and so Google is arguing that that sort of legal overlay should apply here.
I like this line by the Google attorney. There's no such thing as open web display advertising. She accused the government of trying to open a time capsule that would reveal a BlackBerry iPod and a Blockbuster video card.
Yes, it was a pretty good line.
Essentially, what they are saying is like, maybe at one point in time, the in networked this way, but lots of things have moved on, and the government is still very focused on what, in Google's view is a vision of the market that no longer exists anymore.
And so Google also this echoed the argument that we heard in the other Google anti trust case that it's end to end integration makes the technology more efficient and secure and reliable. On that marketers and publishers choose it because they're superior, not because they don't have any other options. And in the other antitrust trial that they lost, they said that, you know, Google's just better, that's why people come to Google.
Yeah, they're making a similar argument here. You know, they have pointed out that there are a lot of other options, both for where you can buy advertising and.
For how you can buy advertising.
So you can do it through Google's tools, but there are certainly other companies that offer similar tools that you can buy these same ads through. And so their argument is, you know, people are using these tools because they're well known and sort of trusted. The government's response is actually
pretty similar to the previous case. They argue that, you know, in these kinds of markets, scale is really important, So like the publishers want to go to where the advertisers are, and the advertisers want to go to where the publishers are. And because Google owns the ad server part on.
The publisher side, and they also own the other.
Tools for publishers, you know, they sort of have an advantage here that a lot of other players.
Do not have.
And while now Google has this what they call an integrated stack, for a long time that wasn't true. Nobody
had an integrated stack. These were all sort of separate products, and the government argues that maybe they should be separated because they keep going back to this thing that you've seen in a lot of Google's documents, which there have been some emails in which people have suggested it's a little bit like Google is operating both like Goldman Sachs a trader and the New York Stock Exchange the place
where they're making trade. And in the financial world, that would never be allowed, like you would not allow somebody who is transacting on the platform to also own the platform. But here Google does own.
All of the pieces, the buy side, the cell side.
And the platform itself, and that represents sort of a conflict of interest that the Justice Department says is very problematic.
Who has the Justice Department put on the stand?
So far, we've actually been gone really fast.
I think we're on like Witness eight or nine.
A really yes.
So the various parts. We've heard from two website publishers, Gannett and News Corps, and they've talked a little bit about how that kine in online advertising has significantly impacted their business. They've had to, you know, shut our publications and fire journalists because they're just not getting as much advertising through these online tools as they used to. We've also heard from a couple rivals who offer other ad
tech tools that are similar to what Google offers. So we heard from another company that is an exchange called index Exchange, and we heard from another company that offers an ad server. It's a little bit different from Google, and their argument was that they tried to initially get in the same market as Google and they couldn't because
it was sort of the gorilla in the room. And we've also heard from two former Google employees so far who worked on the display ad business and sort of had a hand in how some of these tools were developed.
Does the government intend to also call people who are still at Google.
Yes, they do plan to call some folks who are still at Google. I think they're trying to get through some of what we might call like the victim witnesses first, so they were trying to establish some of the harm from Google's conduct. But they do have a number of Google witnesses that they plan to call. The most senior one is Neil Mohan. He is actually now the CEO of YouTube, but for a long time he was very
involved in Google's display advertising business. And then after him, the most sort of senior person is somebody by the name of Don Harrison. He's a pretty senior executive at Google.
He didn't testify in the search trial.
That he did testify in the Epics trial that was over Android.
Well, those are going to be very interesting witnesses to see, you know, hostile witnesses. And who does Google plan to call?
Yeah, most of the people Google plans to call are again its own employees, because they are hoping to sort of show that, you know, Google has really innovated in the market. Their argument is that they've made a lot of changes to make this ecosystem better. In particular, they've spent a lot of resources trying to focus on rooting out like.
BAM and ad fraud.
So they plan to call a number of witnesses who will talk about Google's efforts there and why some of the specific things that the government alleges their anti competitive were, in their views, sort of done for legitimate business purposes.
Is the government call for a breakup of Google's ad tech business here?
Yes, they are specifically calling for a breakup of the business.
Here.
They argue that Google should not essentially be allowed to operate on all sides of the market, you know, the by side, the sell side, and the exchange, and that.
They should have to at least sell off one side of that.
Google you know, maintains that that would really break the sort of feamless experience that they've really created for marketers and website publishers.
Yeah, because in the other trial, there's a possibility they could ask for their breakup, but they didn't say that, like right at the start.
Yeah, in this one they did, like right at the very beginning, say that they thought a breakup was needed. Here in part they have identified a couple of transactions that Google has engaged in over the years, including in particular the two thousand and eight acquisition of double Click, and in that one they bought what has now become.
The exchange of Google's exchange.
And so they argue that that was in the complaint. They have a nice phrase that that was the beginning of marched to monopoly. But that transaction and then a couple others that they outlined really gave Google the tools to build this sort of ad empire, and that maybe we should just unwind some of those transactions.
Google has lost the last two antitrust trials. A lot seems to be riding on this for Google, and a judge is going to decide this, right, there's no jury here, Yes.
There was no jury. It was initially going to be a jury trial, but Google did a very interesting thing in which it just agreed to pay the government's damages, which were two point three million, and that obviated the need for a jury, so it is now just a judge trial. She is expected to rule sometime after the trial, maybe even by the end of the year.
And how long is a trial expected to last?
So initially they were suggesting it might be four to six weeks. They have, however, this week gone much much faster than they had anticipated, in part because the judge is really focused on moving things along very expeditiously, So the current estimate is maybe.
Three to four Thanks so much, Lea. We'll catch up with you when the trial ends. That's Bloomberg Anti trust reporter Leah Niln coming up next on the Bloomberg Law Show. It's a trial where lots of handbags are on display. The Federal Trade Commission is suing to block Tapestry and Capri from merging in an eight point five billion dollar deal. This is Bloomberg. It's not often that a rack of
handbags is rolled into court as evidence. They range from a green and white Kate Spade tote priced at two hundred and seventy nine dollars to a one thousand, ninety five dollars brown leather Coach Rogue handbag. There's the merch and there's the money. In the anti trust trial that will spell the fate of the eight point five billion dollar deal to marry the Coach and Kate Spade brands with Versace and Michael Core's joining me is Bloomberg Intelligence
senior litigation analyst Jennifer Ree, who's covering the trial. Jen it's the FTC so in to stop this deal. Tell us about the opening statements by its lawyer.
They actually say they have two theories of harm by which they could block this deal. And it's sort of what we think of as a typical horizontal deal, meaning there are two companies that want to merge that have products that compete against each other, So pretty straightforward, the traditional kind of merger that has been challenged by the
FTC or Department of Justice in the past. And in this case, what they're really looking at is handbags and a market for what they call accessible luxury handbags and what that really means. They're sort of the handbags in the middle market. They say, it's not the ultra premium, ultra luxury usually European handbags made by companies like Louis Vuitan and Prada and Gucci, and it's not really these mass market bags that are often not leather and usually sold,
you know, for under one hundred dollars. But it's kind of what's in between. And if you look at that piece of the market, Tapestry has Coach and Kate's Bade brands, and Capri has the Michael Core's brand, And what the FTCT says is, look, these are each other's primary competitors. Coach and Kate Spade primarily see themselves as competing in the US at least against Michael Core's, and Michael Corres primarily sees itself as competing against Coach and Kate Spade.
And if you look at the other bags that are within what they call the successible luxury market, the market shares combined would be, according to the FTC, fifty eight percent, and this would be a market that is unduly concentrated and would be presumed harmful. So that's kind of one argument, which is a fairly typical argument. They define a market, they look at what the market shairs are in the market. They look at what the concentration in the market would
be before and after the deal. Their second theory is a somewhat novel one, and it comes out of new guidelines that the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice issued at the end of last year. Now, they've had guidelines for many, many years that lay out how they assess the deal and whether the deal violates the antitrust laws or not. They're not binding on judges, but most judges find them to be persuasive and have followed them.
This FTC updated the guidelines that happens periodically, as I said, at the end of twenty twenty three, and they added
a new provision. And what that provision says is they don't really have to define a market or lay out what the combined market shares would be if they can prove that the merging parties are each other's primary head to head competitors, they constrain each other's pricing essentially in the market, and that if they come together, that constraint on pricing will be eliminated and they'll have the incentive in the ability to increase price.
So they're also.
Relying on this new guideline in case the judge doesn't buy this concept of an accessible luxury handbag market.
The FTC lawyer said in the opening statement that the case is about working and middle class women who will suffer harm if the acquisition goes through, harm because they can't buy a semi luxury.
Harm because what they claim is that that sector of the population or the primary buyers of these handbags, and that there will be three hundred and sixty five million
dollars annually in increased prices across the three brands. That is what the FTC's economist has calculated out through his modeling, and that the primary buyers are a certain segment of the population that tend to make under eighty thousand dollars or up to about eighty thousand dollars a year, and that these are the people that will be harmed.
Okay, it always seems odd to me because you don't have to buy right a cold handbag.
Yeah, that's the thing that's so odd about this case. It's a highly discretionary purchase. And as some of the witnesses for the companies have said, understand, look, you know, we compete for share of dollars spend. A person goes into a store to buy something, they may decide to buy that handbag, or they might decide to buy those boots instead. And it's a very discretionary purchase. If the price is too high, the buyer can walk away. And that is what makes this case quite unusual. It's not
like FDC versus Kroger and Albertson. People must buy food, right, but they don't have to necessarily buy a coach or a Kate's bad or Michael Core's handbag.
So now tell us about the opening by Tapestry's lawyer.
Well, Tapestries lawyers I think have done a very very good job. I mean what they said is they've portrayed the market is being much more competitive, far more dynamic, fast moving, competitive and changing and fragmented than what the FTC is portrayed. Now, first they've said, look, there isn't this successible luxury market. There's just this span of prices that go from what you think of as a less expensive mass market bag all the way up to the
thousands of dollars for these luxury bags. And that many of consumers they survey have a lot of different bags that widely varied price points within their closet, and that the market's changed radically, including in the last few years kind of the birth of or the growth of the purchase of previously used handbags, which has become a big
thing both online and in some department stores. And that the FTC is sort of not looking at the commercial realities of the market as it is today, and that a lot of the data that the economists use to look at the market and to come up with this theoretical three hundred and sixty five million annual harm to consumers is based on data from twenty twenty one in twenty two, and it's just not relevant anymore. And they did a pretty good job, I think, at making that argument.
He said that Lawrence Butterman, anyone who took the subway to court today, or walked on Broadway or Fifth or has access to an iPhone or Android phone can see that the FDC's claims about market competition are completely divorced from reality.
Yeah. And the funny thing is that the company's lawyers rolled into court the very first day with a big rack full of all sorts of different handbags.
I was going to ask you that, And on that cart there was one thousand dollars coach handbag yeah, so, I mean, how does that fit their market definition?
Let's see you And that's the difficulty I think in this market definition they sort of tentatively said that there aren't really precise boundaries or parameters, but generally these accessible luxury handbags range between one hundred dollars and one thousand dollars. And that's the real difficulty of their market because it's very hard to argue that one hundred dollars bag doesn't compete with a ninety dollars bag, or that a thousand dollars bag doesn't compete with let's say, one thousand and
fifty dollars bag. You know, the difficulty of defining a market and putting the boundaries around where competition lies when you have such a wide range of pricing and a wide range of different consumers that have a different idea about what they want or what they're willing to spend, makes it difficult to come up with these market shairs.
And that's why the Federal Trade Commission is also relying on that second theory coming from their new guidelines, that they don't really have to do that that if they can just prove that these two companies view each other as their primary competitor and compete head to head.
That to us.
And the thing is, there are a lot of documents that actually support company documents that support this assertion by the FTC. It's the difficulty here, It's going to kind of be what do the documents look like versus how credible is the testimony of the witnesses, Because there are plenty of documents where these companies call each other their primary competitor or where they tend to compare their pricing to just a small group that generally consists of Michael Core's,
Kate Spade, Coach, Mark Jacobs, and Toribirch. There seem to be a lot of documents like that, and that does suggest a smaller sphere of competition than what the witnesses from the companies are portraying.
Yeah, because I mean a coach bag is going to be more expensive than a Michael Core's bag, yes, right, generally, and as is a Kate Spade bag. And you're talking about, you know, a pretty wide difference there, right.
So the economists for the FTC basically said from his modeling, coach bags sell at an average of one hundred and forty seven dollars more than a Cores bag. And what he calculated out via his modeling, which is quite complicated, is that once tapped Street owns Capri and has the Cores bag, they have the ability incentive to raise prices because to the extent that they raise the price of a Corps bag and lose sales, they're gaining enough of
those sales the substitute buy by. That buyer is going to be a Coach or at kate'spadebag, and so they're gaining backs enough to make it profitable to raise prices.
Can tell us about the first witnesses.
So the first witnesses were called by the SEC, but
they are company representatives. We had, you know, the CEO of Capri, the CEO of Tapestry, you had the president of Coach, you had a senior vice president from Tapestry, and you know, I think that all of them across the board have done a good job of basically saying that they don't view Michael Core's bags as their primary competitor, that they view competition as broad and dynamic and ever changing, and that part of the reason that these documents only
reference this smaller set of competitors is because a lot of their competitors aren't publicly traded. It's hard to get the data, and these are the companies where there's an ease of data. So it's just they can get the data, they can get financial information, and they can easily compare themselves to them. And they also say that they compare
themselves Tapestry to Capri and Capri to Tapestry. They compare themselves quite a lot in earnings calls with investors because they are similar companies in the eyes of investors, in that they are two publicly traded American fashion houses, and that's why they come up a lot as competitors in these investor calls. So they did a good job of sort of explaining away what I would call bad documents. And that's why I kind of see this as you know,
which way is the judge going to go. Is she going to say, no, the documents really tell me the story, or are the witnesses really telling me the story? You know, which is more credible in her eyes in terms of making some decision here.
Has Michael core said it needs an infusion of capital. They're not doing as well as they used to.
Their sales have been declining and they've lost what all of the witness is called brand heat. I've never heard that, but now I know.
I can feel it.
You can feel it that when a bag is hot, a bag is hot, maybe Taylor Swift warret on a picture on Instagram and that bag is now going to be hot. And so they said Michael Cores at one time had brand heat and seems to have lost the brand heat and not been able to regain it, and as the result, has had declining sales and in order to move bags, has had to discount heavily. Now Tapestry says, we can take that brand and we just have better
resources to revitalize it bring back the brand heat. Michael Cores, though, seems to also within their ordinary course documents, have a plan that they're implementing and plan to implement in the future to try to again gain traction and gain momentum and bring back that brand heat. So even though you know, the argument here is that Tapestry can help them, they seem to also have their own internal plan to revitalize. So it's not so much about whether they need an
infusion of capital. It's more about, you know, can they bring that brand back so that it's popular again.
So Wall Street's merger arbitrageres are currently giving Tapestry and Capri a better than even chance of closing the transaction. What does Jennifer Ree give it?
Well, I tell you.
I think I agree. You know, coming into the trial, I was really very fifty to fifty on it. And part of the problem here, June is that an enormous amount of the documents are sealed, so we don't know what they say. So I don't know how bad those documents are that the judge will see. But I think the company witnesses have seemed very credible to me. They seem to be earnest. It doesn't seem to be a lawyer argument that they're making, and what they're saying seems
to be common sense. And the market that just I, as a consumer observed seems to align with what they're saying, that it is dynamic, it is rapidly changing, and there are a lot of options. And then the second thing is that the FTC's economic expert testified yesterday morning, and I felt like his conclusions were backed by data that was just a little bit weak. I think that data is difficult and the judge may not credit his conclusions because the inputs are sketchy. You know, it is older data.
It's data from twenty twenty one. In twenty twenty and some of the sales data he used came from a database called NPD that tracks sales by brand, by wholesalers that means just department stores that's at Dillard's, Macy's, Nordstrom. And he was able to calculate chares essentially using that data. But that data doesn't track all sales and handbags, I
mean people buy them online. It excludes the previously owned bags, that excludes the e commerce direct to consumer, So it's a little bit hard to rely on the market share coming out of that data. And the second thing he did caused me to shake my head a little bit was that this NPD data categorized bags in many different categories names like better, Premium, Active, Leisure, Moderate, Bridge, contemporary, and he took two of those categories only Bridge and contemporary.
And you ask yourself, well, what if bags in the other categories also compete, You're leaving them out. And he didn't talk to the company that collects this data to understand why they put different bags in different categories and whether that was sort of the right category for accessible luxury market that they're claiming, you know, is the appropriate market.
And in his opening statement, what the lawyer for the company said was that if you do include one of these other categories like better or active leisure, that their combined market share has come down to below thirty percent, and that's below the problematic level rather than fifty eight percent. So it's hard to rely on what the FTC's expert
has done here. I don't think listening to that that if I were the judge, that I could and I think in reaction to that and in reaction to the witnesses this week, the merger arts are feeling more positive about the deal.
Well, we have a ways to go yet. We'll check back with you, Jen, Thanks so much. That's Bloomberg Intelligence Senior litigation analyst Jenniferree coming up next. Why Justice Samuel Alito's stock portfolio stands out you're listening to Bloomberg. Samuel Alito is the only justice with a stake in more than two dozen individual companies, a distinction that threatens to
sideline him from major business cases. Since twenty twenty one, Alito has recused himself from sixty four cases involving corporations he owned shares of. This as scrutiny of the Court's judicial ethics has intensified after revelations that Justice Clarence Thomas and Alito, to a lesser degree, accepted undisclosed gifts and
travel from billionaire benefactors. Joining me is Emily Burnbaum Bloomberg Lobbying and legal affairs reporter Emily tell us how Alito's stock portfolio distinguishes him from the other justices.
Alito's stock portfolio is very different from any of the other sitting justices right now. So he owns stock in more than two dozen individual companies, about twenty eight companies, And that was a practice that was more commonplace in years past, and now he's pretty much the last justice left standing with stock and individual companies. So the most part,
the other justices are invested in index funds. You know, they invest in ways that ensure that they are not conflicted when it comes to individual companies.
There's nothing unethical about owning stock. What are the ethics rules about stock?
The rule is if you have a financial stake in a company, that you should refuse yourself from cases involving that company. So that means in Alito's case, that he has recused from dozens and dozens of cases involving companies in which he owns stock. So he owns stock in some of our biggest companies. So that's racy on Kinoko, Phillips, big oil companies, big transportation companies, and companies that are in high litigation areas.
So he has.
Recused himself from sixty four cases involving corporations he owned shares of since twenty twenty one, and last term alone, he recused from fifteen cases due to stock ownership. So that's a lot more recusals in general than his fellow justices. Often they'll recuse because they've seen the case four in lower courts, or maybe one of their parents was involved in the case in some way. But Alito is distinct in that he has to keep refusing himself over and over because of his stock portfolio.
Justices aren't required to say why they're recusing themselves. Recently, the liberal justices have been giving reasons, but the conservative justices have not explain how we know that he's recused himself because of stock ownership.
Yeah, so he doesn't say himself. This is because this stock. It's essentially just a matter of looking at the publicly available information.
You know, he.
Refused is from cases where one of the companies from which he owns stock is a party or has filed a brief, so you know, Johnson and Johnson. He doesn't participate in those cases, and actually neither does Brett Kavanaugh because his father was a lobbyist for the talk industry, and so you basically just look at you know, Okay, this case involves Boeing. Alito owns stock and Boeing he's
refused himself from the case. So as I was talking to experts about this article, they say Alito is very good most of the time at anticipating when he needs to recuse. There have been a couple instances where maybe a company's subsidiary was involved it was a little more gray, or there was a stock he wasn't aware of owned by one of his sons. That was one case. But for the most part, he looks ahead of time and refuses.
But yes, you're right. The latest code of ethics that the Supreme Court put out does say that you can disclose why you're accusing, and that's something that Justice Kagan has done, but Alito still has not chosen to do that.
And so often he'll sell off the stock so that he can sit on the case.
Yes, there have been instances of that. So there is an instance related to Exxon. In twenty sixteen, he sold his stake after years of accusals related to the company. He sold his stock in Oracle ahead of a really important copyright case that was Oracle versus Google. So yeah, throughout his time on the Court, he's chosen to sell stock strategically. He actually late last year sold his Johnson and Johnson's stock. He traded it in for a subsidiary
of Johnson and Johnson. So it's so far a little unclear if that will impact whether he can weigh in on Johnson Johnson related cases or not. We still yet to see.
You mentioned the Supreme Court's Voluntary Code of Ethics, which it adopted in November. Explain how that code encourages justices to try to not refuse.
So the code has a really long section about refusal. It says Supreme Court justices should try to avoid refusal whenever they can. Because they're only nine members, and this is a direct quote. It says much can be lost when even one justice does not participate in a particular case.
They say it's particularly important when it comes to the court deciding which cases to take, because it just makes it that much harder for parties to have their cases accepted when a bunch of the justices aren't even allowed to participate in the decision making. So the Code of
Ethics says that that can have a distorting effect. So while it's not an ethics issue for Aldo to own stock in that you know, he's fully allowed to, there are concerns about how well the court functions when one of the justices is conflicted out from dozes of cases.
You spoke to Northwestern professor Stephen Lubad who said it's a question not of ethics, but of judgment. Not everything that's legal is a good idea.
Yeah, So he's pointing out, you know, there's no allegation that Alito is violating rules. There's not a clause that says don't own stock in individual companies. It's more that this has really folid out of fashion, especially as scrutiny has increased on the Supreme Court. Amid all of the ethics concerns, a lot of justice has chosen no longer to invest in individual companies. There's obviously more ethical scrutiny of the
Supreme Court and of our federal judiciary than ever. So then it becomes a question of why does he still own these stocks? You know, there's not that much evidence. You know, it's much better for your accumulation of wealth to own stock in individual companies, probably just as good
to own index funds. So then it becomes a question of why, you know, when this hampers the Court's functioning, When this means Alito will sit out of pretty important cases, I think it just comes down to the question of what's the point.
I can't figure it out, and I'm sure he will not tell us. And also, as you're right, he is a very reliable pro business vote. Can you agree with the Chamber of Commerce in seventy three percent of cases last term.
Yes, So he's been a long time critic of federal environmental regulations. He often sides with business. One really important case that is pending before the Court right now is essentially whether states and cities can sue oil companies for damages over how oil companies have contributed to climate change. But this is a really big issue there's tons of similar lawsuits climbing up across the country, and Alito is
not going to be able to weigh in. He's already re use himself from the petition pending before the court in this case because he owns stock in several oil companies. So if I were an oil company, that would be pretty disappointing. Because he's reliably pro business, so it's going to have an impact on lots of similar big business cases.
So he might still sell his stock before the briefings in oral arguments.
He could do that in this case, he's already refused himself from considering whether the court should take it up. If he sold all of his oil company stocks tomorrow, then he potentially could take part.
But his annual.
Financial disclosure just came out the other day. He hasn't sold any new stocks, so he could, but right now it doesn't seem like he's planning to, and we don't.
Really know the exact stock value. It's a range.
Yeah, They're all reported in ranges. So he has stocks that are between one and fifteen thousand. He has a bunch of stocks that are between fifteen and fifty. I don't think right now he has any stocks that are worth more than that, so it's hard to say exactly
how much all of them are worth altogether. One disclaimer, financial disclosures don't differentiate between the stocks owned by Alito or owned by his wife, So some of these stocks could belong to his wife, but just the court considers them to be the same because they are married.
And we should mention that most of these recusals are coming while the court is considering cases, not after the court has taken the case.
Yeah, for the most part.
Yes, there have been a few reported instances where Alito failed to accuse himself in cases where he should have because of stock ownership.
So in twenty seventeen, there was a case involving Merk, so he initially failed to recuse despite owning stock in the company. He ultimately sold his shares and participated in that case. And then in there was another instance in which he says there was an unintentional conflict of interests, so he blamed it on staff oversight. He took part in a two thousand and nine ruling that involved ABC News even though his children held stock in Disney, so
he in that case voted against ABC. He joined a five to four majority, So you know, his vote was pretty consequential in that case. He owed a lot of stock and so he said it kind of flipped under the radar.
That's some slip. There would have been a tie if he hadn't participated, and then the decision of the lower court would have stood. Instead, the Supreme Court reversed the decision that was favorable to the networks in that five to four vote that he took part in. Now I'm not sure there's anything unethical about this, but one of his trades appeared to be political.
Yeah, so he still hasn't said anything about this publicly, but you might remember last year there was a big conservative boycott of Anheuser Busch that's the maker of bud Light. Basically they got a lot of hot water with conservatives because they partnered with a transgender influencer to promote some beer. So around the time of that boycott, Alito sold his shares of Anheuser Busch and he bought shares of Arrival
beer maker, which is molten Core's. So a lot of people noticed that speculated about whether he was participating in the conservative boycott, and he hasn't said anything, but the timing did align with the boycott.
Sort of reminds me about the flag flying incident. Thanks so much, Emily, it's a really revealing story. That's Emily Burnbaum, Bloomberg Lobbying and legal affairs reporter. And that's it for this edition of the Bloomberg Law Podcast. Remember you can always get the latest legal news by subscribing and listening to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at Bloomberg dot com, slash podcast, slash Law. I'm June Grosso and this is Bloomberg