By Nate Raymond

(Reuters) – A Judiciary panel on Thursday rejected a request from Democratic lawmakers to refer conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to the Justice Department to investigate claims that he failed to disclose gifts and trips from a wealthy benefactor.

The secretary of the U.S. Judicial Conference, the federal judiciary’s top policy-making body, cited changes Thomas made to his annual financial disclosure reports in two letters that addressed several questions raised by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Rep. Hank Johnson.

The conference, in a separate letter, also rejected a conservative group’s request that liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson also be referred to the Justice Department based on omissions in its own disclosure reports.

Jackson has since changed her reports, the letter says. The letter was addressed to Center for Renewing America President Russell Vought, who was chosen by Republican President-elect Donald Trump to head the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.

In a statement, Whitehouse criticized the judiciary’s response to his inquiry about Thomas, saying it was “evading its legal duty to hold a Supreme Court justice accountable for ethical violations.”

The justices and the center did not respond to requests for comment.

Democratic lawmakers had made their request regarding Thomas, a member of the Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority, in an April 2023 letter after ProPublica and others reported that he received gifts, including luxury trips, from the wealthy Texas businessman Harlan Crow hadn’t reported it.

Their letter argued that a referral to the Justice Department was warranted because Thomas had willfully violated the disclosure requirements of the Ethics in Government Act of 1978.

Thomas said he was told he did not have to report this type of “personal hospitality” and promised to do so in the future starting with his 2022 annual report, filed in August 2023.

U.S. District Judge Robert Conrad, who heads the Judiciary’s administrative division and serves as secretary of the Judicial Conference, wrote that the Judiciary has been busy since 2023 updating its financial disclosure requirements and clarifying when the personal entertainment exemption does not apply.

He said Thomas has filed amended financial disclosure reports since the issues first arose and he has agreed to follow relevant guidance given to other federal judges, including the new guidelines.

“We have no reason to believe he did anything less,” Conrad wrote.

Conrad declined to make a referral to the Justice Department, citing “constitutional questions” about whether the Judicial Conference could do so that required further investigation.

He also said the lawmakers’ request was up for debate when Whitehouse and another senator wrote directly to Attorney General Merrick Garland asking him to appoint a special counsel to investigate the same matters.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Leslie Adler, David Gregorio, Lincoln Feast and Kate Mayberry)