Democrats demand details on response to new Supreme Court leak allegations

Two Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts on Sunday demanding answers after a New York Times report suggested Justice Samuel Alito discussed the outcome of a 2014 high-profile contraception case before the court released its opinion.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), who sit on the Senate and House Judiciary committees, respectively, asked Roberts and the Supreme Court’s legal counsel if the court opened an investigation into the allegations.

The Times reported on Saturday that Rev. Rob Schenck, who formerly led an evangelical nonprofit, sent a letter to Roberts in July indicating he learned of the outcome of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby in 2014 from a wealthy donor, Gayle Wright, after she had dinner with Alito and his wife.

Alito, who later wrote the majority opinion in the case that ruled for-profit companies can deny contraception coverage in employees’ health insurance based on religious objections, denied that he leaked the outcome in a statement to the Times. Wright also denied Schenck’s account.

Whitehouse and Johnson previously wrote a letter to the court in early September raising broader concerns about a religious group’s private attempts to lobby some of the justices, and the lawmakers signaled in their newest letter that they were unsatisfied with the court’s response.

“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,” the two Democrats 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.”

Whitehouse and Johnson in the new letter, which was first reported by Politico, asked Roberts if the court reevaluated any of its judicial ethics or gift rules in the wake of Schneck’s July letter detailing the allegations.

The lawmakers also asked who is responsible for policing the relationship between the court and the Supreme Court Historical Society to ensure society members do not gain “undue influence.” Wright at the time of the dinner was reportedly a member.

“Our previous letter identified reports of conduct by justices that increasingly appear out of line with the conduct permissible for other federal judges and, in some cases, may be inconsistent with federal law,” Whitehouse and Johnson wrote.

“Recent reporting by the New York Times that the orchestrators of this judicial lobbying campaign may have used their access to certain justices to secure confidential information about pending cases only deepens our concerns about the lack of adequate ethical and legal guardrails at the Court,” the lawmakers added.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is also reviewing the Schneck’s allegations.

The Hill has reached out to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court Historical Society for comment.

The report comes after Alito’s draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked to Politico in May, which sparked a probe by the court into the leak. 

A majority of the justices ultimately joined Alito’s final opinion in the case, which was released the following month and closely mirrored the leaked document.