Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor accepted more than $4,000 in free concert tickets from Rimas Entertainment, the Puerto Rican record label behind reggaeton star Bad Bunny, during a private trip to Puerto Rico last August, her 2025 financial disclosure shows.
The gift, valued at $4,333, surfaced in annual disclosure forms that the Supreme Court released alongside filings from other justices. Sotomayor's form describes the tickets as coming from "a record company, which provided tickets for a concert for me and guests while I was on a private trip to Puerto Rico in August 2025," the Daily Caller reported.
The disclosure does not name which artist performed. But Bad Bunny held a 30-show residency in San Juan from July through September 2025, the same window Sotomayor was on the island. Rimas Entertainment, founded in 2014 by Bad Bunny's longtime manager Noah Assad, is the artist's label.
Sotomayor is not the first justice to report receiving free concert tickets. The New York Post noted that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson received nearly $4,000 in concert tickets from Beyoncé in 2024, establishing what is becoming a recurring line item on Supreme Court disclosure forms.
The concert tickets were not the only gift Sotomayor reported. The Coterie Theatre in Kansas City, Missouri, paid $598 for her return airfare after a performance of a musical adaptation of her children's book "Just Ask!" The theater hosted the musical from January 29 through February 23, 2025.
But the Rimas Entertainment gift drew sharper attention, in part because of Bad Bunny's own political profile. The artist performed the Super LX halftime show in February 2026 entirely in Spanish, then appeared to scrub his Instagram account afterward. At the 2026 Grammys, he declared "ICE out" during his acceptance speech, a pointed reference to federal immigration enforcement that drew conservative criticism.
Turning Point USA organized a rival "All American Halftime Show" in response, featuring Kid Rock, Brantley Gilbert, Lee Brice, and Gabby Barrett. The alternative broadcast drew up to 6.1 million concurrent viewers on YouTube, per the New York Times.
The Washington Examiner reported that Sotomayor failed to disclose several other gifts and awards she received during the year, including the 2025 Brandeis Medal valued at $822, the Powell Distinguished Leadership Award valued at $344, and a Lifetime Liberty Achievement Award valued at $359. The Examiner also noted that Sotomayor did not publicly announce her attendance at the Bad Bunny concert, and her appearance was not widely reported in the United States at the time.
Those omissions raise fair questions about how seriously some justices treat the disclosure process, and whether the current system catches what it is supposed to catch. Sotomayor has not been shy about inserting herself into public debates from the bench, which makes the gap between her public pronouncements and her private financial conduct all the more worth examining.
The concert tickets, while eye-catching, represent a fraction of the outside income flowing to members of the nation's highest court. The 2025 disclosures paint a broader picture of justices earning substantial sums from publishing.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson reported a $1.18 million book advance from Penguin Random House. Just the News reported that four justices collectively earned more than $2 million in book payments in 2025. Jackson also received a $2,500 painting as a gift.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett earned almost $850,000 in publication and copyright royalties from Javelin Group LLC. Justice Neil Gorsuch reported more than $300,000 in royalties from HarperCollins Publishers LLC and Princeton University Press. Barrett has drawn scrutiny from conservatives on other fronts, but her book income, like Gorsuch's, reflects royalties earned from published work rather than gifts from outside parties.
That distinction matters. Royalties from a book you wrote are earned income. Concert tickets from a record label whose marquee artist uses awards shows to attack federal law enforcement are something else entirely.
AP News reported that Supreme Court justices have faced heightened ethical scrutiny in recent years following media coverage of gifts, travel, and lucrative book deals. Fox News noted that the scrutiny intensified after revelations that some justices failed to disclose luxury travel and real estate transactions.
Much of that earlier criticism was aimed at conservative justices, particularly Clarence Thomas. Media outlets and Democratic lawmakers spent months demanding stricter ethics rules for the court, framing the issue as one of right-leaning judicial corruption. Now that the disclosure spotlight has landed on Sotomayor, the energy has been notably quieter.
The financial disclosure form itself is a blunt instrument. It captures dollar amounts and source names but reveals little about the relationship between the gift giver and the justice, or whether any matter before the court could intersect with the donor's interests. Ethics questions involving judges tend to surface only after the fact, when the damage to public confidence is already done.
The disclosure does not explain why Rimas Entertainment provided the tickets or what, if any, prior relationship existed between the label and Sotomayor. Neither Sotomayor's office nor Rimas Entertainment appears to have commented publicly on the gift.
The disclosures landed the same week the Supreme Court issued a string of consequential opinions. The court upheld birthright citizenship, upheld state laws barring transgender individuals from competing on girls' and women's sports teams at public schools, and struck down political party-coordinated spending limits on federal elections, all in a series of Tuesday rulings.
Sotomayor has made headlines before for conduct beyond her judicial opinions, and this latest disclosure adds another entry to that record. Whether the concert tickets amount to a genuine ethics concern or merely an awkward optic, they arrive at a moment when the court can least afford to look casual about outside influence.
Several basic facts remain unresolved. Which specific concert did Sotomayor attend? The disclosure form does not say which artist performed, even though the timing and the label point in an obvious direction. Who were the unnamed guests? What venue hosted the event? And does any matter on the court's current or future docket touch Rimas Entertainment or its affiliated interests?
Public attention to the justices' off-bench lives has grown steadily, and disclosures like this one explain why. Taxpayers fund the court. They have a right to know who else is picking up the tab.
When the ethics spotlight was on conservative justices, the left demanded reform. Now that a liberal justice is accepting thousands in freebies from a label whose star artist uses his platform to oppose immigration enforcement, the silence speaks for itself.
