The Supreme Court said there is no suggestion Justice Samuel Alito violated ethics standards after a former anti-abortion activist alleged Alito may have told people the outcome of a 2014 decision before it was published, according to a letter responding to a pair of Democratic lawmakers who inquired about the matter.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA), Democrats who chair subcommittees in their respective chambers on federal courts, sent a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts on Nov. 20 asking whether the court had “opened an investigation” into Alito allegedly leaking the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby ruling, despite the justice’s prompt denial of such claims in a Nov. 19 New York Times report. On Monday, the high court’s legal counsel responded to the letter, saying allegations Alito or his spouse provided the outcome of the ruling in advance were “uncorroborated.”
“There is nothing to suggest that Justice Alito’s actions violated ethics standards. Relevant rules balance preventing gifts that might undermine public confidence in the judiciary and allowing judges to maintain normal personal friendships,” wrote Ethan Torrey, an attorney for the court.
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The allegation was levied by the Rev. Rob Schenck, a former anti-abortion activist and founder of a group called Faith and Action who later changed his position away from opposing abortion access to contending such procedures are up to “an individual and his or her conscience.”
Schenck claimed he was told about the outcome of the 2014 case by Gayle Wright, the wife of a now-deceased affluent real estate developer Don Wright, both of whom were part of a program that attempted to gain close access to the justices known as “Operation Higher Court,” according to the New York Times.
“Justice Alito has said that neither he nor Mrs. Alito” told Wright, a guest at his home years ago, “about the decision in the Hobby Lobby case, or about the authorship of the opinion from the court,” Torrey wrote.
Wright previously denied Schenck’s claims in an interview with CNN.
The lawmakers had asked the chief justice to assist in an investigation into the allegations and warned that Schenck’s claims were “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.”
They also claimed the allegations by Schenck suggested that “the orchestrators of this judicial lobby campaign may have used their access to certain justices to secure confidential information about pending cases that only deepens our concerns about the lack of adequate ethical and legal guardrails at the court.”
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The allegations against Alito come as the Supreme Court has still not returned an update about a monthslong investigation into the leak of a draft opinion in May, which signaled the curtailing of Roe v. Wade more than a month before the final opinion was published.
The Washington Examiner contacted Whitehouse and Johnson for a response.
