Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito testified before the House Appropriations Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, on March 7, 2019. (Photo: Susan Walsh/AP Images)
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is embroiled in another controversy this week following reports that he participated in the partisan Bud Light boycott by way of stock trades.
Financial disclosure records show that Alito sold between $1,000 and $5,000 of AB InBev stock on Aug. 14, 2023, four months after Bud Light ignited right-wing backlash for partnering with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. On the same day, Alito reportedly bought an equal amount of stock in a competing brewing company, Molson Coors.
On the day of the purchase, AB InBev was trading at $51 and Molson Coors at $64.
Interestingly, those numbers have effectively swapped since then. Perhaps thanks to high-profile cosigns from Donald Trump, Dana White and Peyton Manning, AB InBev has managed to reclaim market share and is currently trading at around $66. Molson Coors, meanwhile, is facing a months-long Teamsters strike and trading at $55.
The question isn't whether Alito made money off the trade but whether he violated the court's code of conduct that requires justices to "refrain from political activity." In August, the conservative backlash against Bud Light was reaching a fever pitch, culminating when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis threatened legal action against the beer's parent company.
Supreme Court justices are permitted to make stock trades off of market dynamics, but not political biases. Identifying the distinction between the two is an infamously hazy tightrope.
Writing for Law Dork, journalist Chris Geidner commented:
"There is enough there — facts and dates — to at least merit Alito providing an explanation for why he made those transactions on that date, specifically whether it was part of a heavily publicized anti-trans boycott that was ongoing as cases addressing trans rights were percolating in the lower courts and, he knew, could reach the Supreme Court any day."
The Bud Light revelation comes days after Justice Alito was discovered to have flown an upside-down American flag — a symbol of the "Stop the Steal" protests — in the weeks after the capital riot on Jan. 6, 2021. Democrats including Dick Durbin and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries are currently asking that he recuse himself from Trump-related cases.
Trump has famously also been a prominent voice in the ongoing Bud Light controversy. After remaining largely silent throughout the height of the boycott, the former president urged his supporters on Truth Social to give the beer brand a second shot. Pundits speculated that the move may be related to Trump's estimated $5 million stock ownership in AB InBev.
“They’ve raised over $30,000,000 and given 44,000 Scholarships. Anheuser-Busch is a Great American Brand that perhaps deserves a Second Chance? What do you think? Perhaps, instead, we should be going after those companies that are looking to DESTROY AMERICA!" Trump wrote in Feb. 2024.
