Senator Dick Durbin speaks at the US Capitol in May. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) announced Saturday that his group is reviewing “serious allegations” in a New York Times report that a 2014 Supreme Court ruling was leaked to a former anti-abortion activist weeks in advance.
The latest: Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), who chair the subcommittees on the courts, wrote to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts asking- li whether any action had been taken on the alleged 2014. leak and suggested they would investigate if not, Politico first reported Sunday night.
Photo: Senate Judiciary Committee/Twitter
- “If the Court, as your letter suggests, is unwilling to undertake investigations into potential ethics violations that leaves Congress as the only forum,” they wrote, referring to earlier correspondence with Roberts about reports that allegedly had assumed a religious group. tried to influence the judges.
Driving the news: Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote majority opinions in both the 2014 Hobby Lobby contraception and religious liberty case and the leaked draft opinion in the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, has called any suggestion that he or his wife disclosed the 2014 ruling to anyone “false.”
- Former anti-abortion leader Rev. Rob Schenck told the NYT that Gayle Wright, a donor to the evangelical organization he then led, informed him of the decision. However, Wright “denied obtaining or passing on this information,” the NYT reports.
What they’re saying: Whitehouse and Johnson (D-Ga.) joined Durbin in urging their colleagues in Congress to pass legislation requiring a code of ethics for Supreme Court justices, the AP reported Sunday evening.
- In a statement, lawmakers called the NYT report “another black mark on the Supreme Court’s increasingly deteriorating ethics record” and vowed to “get to the bottom of these serious allegations,” according to the AP.
Read Sen. Whitehouse and Rep. Johnson’s letter to Chief Justice Roberts, obtained by Politico, via DocumentCloud:
Editor’s note: This article has been updated with details from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Rep. Hank Johnson’s letter to Chief Justice John Roberts.