Though the justices are not subject to a binding federal code of conduct (such as those regulating all other federal judges’ acceptance of gifts or restricting Department of Justice employees from accepting gifts from a single source in excess of $20 or $50 in a single year),
they are bound by what we old-timers at DOJ called “the Watergate forms.” The latter are financial disclosure forms, mandated post-Watergate, that supervisory, high-level and/or Senate confirmed federal employees from the three branches (congressional, executive, and judiciary) must complete every year.
The words of the 1978 Watergate disclosure statute are clear and require disclosure of benefits to the federal employee, the federal employee’s dependents, as well as the employee’s spouse.
In fact, the ethics statute was amended after the 2013 case of U.S. v. Windsor that recognized marriage equality in federal law, to make clear that federal employees must also disclose benefits provided to same-sex spouses.
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