One account has it that the family declined it.
We probably would not be told the truth if there was something nefarious...
Which is why this is probably a teapot tempest.
It’s inconvenient in a way. It increases the activist quotient of the Court by decreasing the anti-activist quotient of it.
But the problem of the USSC is not a new discovery. It’s as old as Marbury v. Madison. If a “We The People” has been so torpid as not to do something like what is now called a Bork Amendment in all that time, it’s on “Us.”