Democratic lawmakers are demanding answers after a bombshell New York Times report alleged that a 2014 Supreme Court decision was leaked to a former anti-abortion activist.
The New York Times report, published Saturday, chronicled yearslong efforts by Rev. Robert Schenck, once an anti-abortion activist, and other donors to his nonprofit group to reach conservative justices and push anti-abortion positions. Schenck claimed, according to the report, that he obtained advanced word of the outcome in the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, in which Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his majority opinion that religious business owners did not have to comply with the Affordable Care Act’s mandate requiring contraception coverage.
FORMER ANTI-ABORTION ACTIVIST ALLEGES LEAK IN 2014 SUPREME COURT CASE AUTHORED BY ALITO
Alito, who denies leaking the 2014 decision, also authored the draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that was leaked to Politico in May. At the time of that leak, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts launched an investigation and vowed that the bench would not be intimidated or swayed by any sort of outside pressure when deciding on whether to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion case. The status of that investigation has not been made public.
With regard to the New York Times report, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) said in a statement Saturday that his panel was “reviewing these serious allegations” before urging Congress to pass Sen. Chris Murphy’s (D-CT) legislation establishing ethics codes for Supreme Court justices.
WHO IS ROB SCHENCK: CAN THE MAN BEHIND THE BOMBSHELL 2014 SUPREME COURT LEAK BE TRUSTED?
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA), who chair subcommittees in their respective chambers on federal courts, said in a joint statement that the New York Times report was “another black mark on the Supreme Court’s increasingly marred ethical record” and said they “intend to get to the bottom of these serious allegations.”
Going further, the two lawmakers penned a letter to Roberts on Sunday demanding answers on what, if any, action had been taken over the 2014 leak and suggested they would investigate the matter if Roberts did not launch a proper investigation.
“Congressional oversight and internal investigations initiated by the Court itself are, as a general matter, the only two avenues of investigating unethical conduct at the Court,” Whitehouse and Johnson wrote. “If the Court, as your letter suggests, is not willing to undertake fact-finding inquiries into possible ethics violations that leaves Congress as the only forum.”
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The two were referencing a letter sent to them by the Supreme Court’s ethics attorney on Roberts’s behalf earlier this month. That correspondence was a response to a September letter from Whitehouse and Johnson to Roberts asking about reporting from Politico and Rolling Stone about influence peddling campaigns being undertaken by activists to encourage favorable rulings from justices.
“A response pointing out the existence of rules is not responsive to questions about whether those rules were broken,” the new letter stated.
