You may recall some hay being made about Justice Alito attending then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s Madison Dinner on June 12, 2019. (Interestingly, it does not appear that there were open petitions involving the State Department at SCOTUS on that date; Gorsuch and Kavanaugh were also invited to a Madison Dinner though we can’t confirm their attendance.)

So it’s worth noting that Justice Jackson and her husband attended a small Institute for Education dinner in Washington this past January also attended by Kathi Vidal, the Commerce undersecretary and USPTO director.

Director Vidal is the named petitioner or respondent in several recent Supreme Court cases, including a couple of open ones.

This had been unreported, so Fix the Court asked the Court on July 24 who exactly paid for the Jacksons’ dinners or if any other gifts were exchanged at the event, and we have not heard back.

Justices are allowed to have friends and attend dinners, of course, and there’s a difference between Vidal the person being sued vs. Vidal the head of an agency being sued.

But all that said, especially since it does not appear that Vidal is an old friend of the Jacksons, we’d rather the names on the front of briefs in open cases not show up on Flickr with Supreme Court justices.