Obama-Appointed Liberal Justice May Not Be Impartial After All, Group Warns Senators

A judicial advocacy group is calling on senators to probe liberal Supreme Court Associate Justice Elena Kagan’s recent decisions to not recuse herself from cases, including one involving climate change.

In a Monday letter sent to four leading lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Judiciary Crisis Network (JCN) argues that Kagan’s recent recusals and non-recusals are inconsistent and call into question the impartiality of the justice, whom former President Barack Obama appointed to the bench in 2010.

The letter’s main focus is on Kagan’s current participation in Suncor Energy v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, a pending landmark case regarding climate liability.

Kagan wrote the foreword to the Fourth Edition of the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence published in 2025 in which she expressed views on climate change.

The foreword should have required her to disqualify herself, the letter alleges, JCN argued, citing federal law.

“Justice Kagan’s conflicts of interest on climate litigation preclude her from serving as the ‘neutral arbiter’ required by her oath,” Carrie Severino, President of the JCN told The Daily Caller News Foundation in a statement.

“By endorsing and penning a promotional preface for a judges’ reference manual featuring an overtly biased ‘climate science’ chapter, she embraced the partisan ideals and legal theories driving state and local climate lawfare,” Severino added. “The manual’s bias was so egregious that Congress and state attorneys general called for its removal.”

Those who recuse themselves from a case often do so for two reasons: whether there is a financial interest or there is bias in the judge’s decision, according to Cornell Law School.

“Kagan’s implicit judicial endorsement of the manual and her support of climate-lawfare theories are evidence she cannot remain impartial on climate litigation, including the Court’s upcoming Suncor case. She must recuse herself immediately,” Severino’s statement added.

The JCN president further elaborated her stance on Kagan in a Monday post to X.

“Justice Kagan’s participation in the Suncor case is indefensible given her public endorsement of climate lawfare plaintiffs’ theories,” she wrote. “If Justice Kagan will not take it upon herself to follow the law, the Senate Judiciary Committee must step in.”

Kagan, a former colleague of Obama at University of Chicago Law School was not a judge prior to her nomination — unlike the other eight other justices on the Court. She instead served as U.S. Solicitor General under Obama and the Dean of Harvard

JCN is a legal group that focuses on “the Founder’s vision” for the law, government and an originalist interpretation of the constitution.