I don't find anything remotely 'disturbing' about Judge Alito ruling (initially) in this case - it was not a case involving any substantive issue to do with Vanguard's operations, finances, etc. It was to do (so far as it has been described) with a widow fighting over control of her late husband's estate - thus, it involved Vanguard in only the most distant and incidental way, as the shares in question happened to be in Vanguard mutual funds, but if the legal contest had been over her late husband's shares of IBM, Microsoft, etc. judges need not recuse themselves just because they might happen to own stock in those companies.... this sounds (to me, anyway) like a purely private, personal dispute involving the widow and her late husband's estate, and not anything to do with Vanguard per se. Alito taking the later step of recusing himself and seeking a new ruling strikes me as completely unnecessary except in the "CYA" sense of our absurdly litigious society which can allow the most trivial minutia to become a courtroom battle.
No, they were listed as co-defendants.