WASHINGTON - Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas failed for at least five years to report on his financial disclosures his wife's income from a conservative policy group, according to the watchdog group Common Cause. Between 2003 and 2007, Virginia Thomas, a longtime conservative activist, was paid $686,589 by the Heritage Foundation, according to a Common Cause review of Internal Revenue Service records. Thomas failed to note the income for those years, choosing instead to check a box titled "none" where "spousal non-investment income" should have been disclosed.
A Supreme Court spokesperson could not be reached for comment. Mrs. Thomas' employment by the Heritage Foundation was well-known at the time.
Mrs. Thomas also has been active in the group Liberty Central, which she founded to restore the "founding principles" of limited government and individual liberty.
In his 2009 disclosure, Justice Thomas also reported spousal income as "none." Common Cause says Liberty Central paid Thomas an unknown salary that year.
Federal judges are bound by law to disclose the source of spousal income, said Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University Law School.
"It could not have been an oversight," Gillers said.
Steven Lubet, an expert on judicial ethics at Northwestern University School of Law, said the failure to disclose spousal income "is not a crime of any sort, but there is a potential civil penalty."
