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In response to a New York Times story that a court decision from 2014 was leaked to a former anti-abortion activist, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has denied any involvement. According to numerous news sources, Alito denied making any early disclosures of the court’s decision in the contraception and religious rights case Burwell v. Hobby Lobby.
According to The Times, the Rev. Rob Schenck was informed of the court’s ruling in the case weeks before it was made public. He claimed that Gayle Wright, a donor to the evangelical organization that Schenck was in charge of at the time, informed him of the decision.
After dining with Alito and his wife, Wright and her husband wrote Schenck an email asking him to call her if he wanted to hear “some intriguing news.” The Times looked over the email. According to Schenck, Wright informed him that the court would find in favor of Hobby Lobby and rule that for-profit businesses can refuse to cover contraception for employees due to a religious objection.
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In the end, the court found 5–4 in Hobby Lobby’s favor. The Hill contacted Schenck and the court for comment, but neither responded right away. In his comments, Alito said that the Wrights and he and his wife have “casual and purely social contact.” As Schenck alleges, he did have dinner with them in June 2014, but he denied disclosing the case’s outcome.
Wright likewise refuted the Time’s claims that she was given or made aware of the court’s decision. Four people who were reportedly interviewed by The Times and who claimed that Schenck had informed them of the leak in the past by way of a leak indicate that he may have had access to sensitive material and was preparing his team for success.
The information surfaced months after an early leaked copy of the court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which reversed Roe v. Wade’s federal abortion rights. At the time, Chief Justice John Roberts denounced the leak and declared that the court would look into the source; however, the court has been fairly silent on the investigation’s status since then.
Since the leak and the court’s ultimate decision to overturn Roe, polls have revealed a dramatic decline in the public’s confidence in the court. According to Schenck’s statement to the Times, he planned a PR campaign using the data.
This @nytimes article makes a strong case that Justice Alito leaked the @HobbyLobby outcome in 2014. https://t.co/9JylsQrGwn Was he the one who leaked the Dobbs decision in Roe?
— Rep. Hank Johnson (@RepHankJohnson) November 19, 2022
According to The Times, Schenck alerted Roberts of the Hobby Lobby case leak in July and shared that he had told Hobby Lobby’s CEO of what he knew a day or two before the court announced its decision. As Trump enters the 2024 election, these are the results of three criminal investigations.
For the second time in a week, the DC attorney general sues Washington Commanders. Since then, Schenck has changed his mind about abortion, and he is now attempting to portray himself as a progressive evangelical leader. He told the Times that he made the decision to speak out at this time out of regret for what had occurred.
He declared, “What we did was wrong. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) criticized the court on Twitter on Saturday for opening an inquiry following the Dobbs leak but appearing to do nothing in this case or regarding whether Justice Clarence Thomas was aware of his wife Ginni Thomas’s attempts to have the 2020 presidential election results in some states overturned.
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