Justice Sotomayor’s Supreme Court Staff Sold Her Books By Adam Andrzejewski
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s taxpayer-funded staff helped organize events to sell her books, for which she has made $3.7 million since joining the court in 2009, according to an Associated Press investigation. Her salary on the court is $285,000.
In 2019, Sotomayor hosted an event at a Portland public library for her book “Just Ask!” Before the event, a Sotomayor aide emailed the organizers, informing them they had not bought enough books. “For an event with 1,000 people and they have to have a copy of Just Ask to get into the line, 250 books is definitely not enough,” said her aide, Anh Le, in an email, the AP reported.
Staff pushed books at other events as well. Before events at UC Davis Law School, University of Wisconsin, Clemson University, and Michigan State University, taxpayer-funded staff pushed organizers to buy books, or to buy more than their original order. Some books were shipped to the Supreme Court, where her staff brought them to her to sign in her chambers.
The court defended Sotomayor, saying in a statement that, “When [Sotomayor] is invited to participate in a book program, Chambers staff recommends the number of books (for an organization to order) based on the size of the audience so as not to disappoint attendees who may anticipate books being available at an event.”
What’s more, Sotomayor’s publisher, Penguin Random House, has had several matters before the court in which Sotomayor did not recuse herself.
“Justice Sotomayor would have recused in cases in which Penguin Random House was a party, in light of her close and ongoing relationship with the publisher,” the Supreme Court said in a statement. “An inadvertent omission failed to bring Penguin’s participation in several cases to her attention; those cases ultimately were not selected for review by the Court. Chambers’ conflict check procedures have since been changed.”
Justices vote on whether to accept cases when parties file petitions to be heard, or grant a writ of certiorari.
Many justices have written books and signed book deals for substantial amounts of money. No other justices, however, have been shown to use their taxpayer-funded staff to sell them.
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