The taint on the Supreme Court

As the Supreme Court investigates the extraordinary leak this spring of a draft opinion of the decision overturning Roe v. Wade, a former anti-abortion leader has come forward claiming that another breach occurred in a 2014 landmark case involving contraception and religious rights.

In a letter to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and in interviews with The New York Times, the Rev. Rob Schenck said he was told the outcome of the 2014 case weeks before it was announced. He used that information to prepare a public relations push, records show, and he said that at the last minute he tipped off the president of Hobby Lobby, the craft store chain owned by Christian evangelicals that was the winning party in the case.

Both court decisions were triumphs for conservatives and the religious right. Both majority opinions were written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. [...] With Hobby Lobby, according to Mr. Schenck, the outcome was shared with only a handful of advocates.

  NYT

Making it arguably worse than the leak to the press of the Dobbs case decision.

The evidence for Mr. Schenck’s account of the breach has gaps. But in months of examining Mr. Schenck’s claims, The Times found a trail of contemporaneous emails and conversations that strongly suggested he knew the outcome and the author of the Hobby Lobby decision before it was made public.

Mr. Schenck, who used to lead an evangelical nonprofit in Washington, said he learned about the Hobby Lobby opinion because he had worked for years to exploit the court’s permeability. He gained access through faith, through favors traded with gatekeepers and through wealthy donors to his organization, abortion opponents whom he called “stealth missionaries.”

Disgraceful conduct by the justices. Religious pun acknowledged.

In May, after the draft opinion in the abortion case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, was leaked in what Justice Alito recently called “a grave betrayal,” the chief justice took the unusual step of ordering an investigation by the Supreme Court’s marshal.

The one who knows exactly how to navigate the investigation because he's the leaker calls for an investigation of the leak.

Two months later, Mr. Schenck sent his letter to Chief Justice Roberts, saying he believed his information about the Hobby Lobby case was relevant to the inquiry. He said he has not gotten any response.

No, I bet not. They weren't expecting that. There's a serious huddle going on at SCOTUS right about now, you can bet your boots.

In early June 2014, an Ohio couple who were Mr. Schenck’s star donors shared a meal with Justice Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann. A day later, Gayle Wright, one of the pair, contacted Mr. Schenck, according to an email reviewed by The Times. “Rob, if you want some interesting news please call. No emails,” she wrote.

Mr. Schenck said Mrs. Wright told him that the decision would be favorable to Hobby Lobby, and that Justice Alito had written the majority opinion. Three weeks later, that’s exactly what happened.

[...]

Justice Alito, in a statement issued through the court’s spokeswoman, denied disclosing the decision.

I wouldn't have expected anything else.

Mrs. Wright, in a phone interview, denied obtaining or passing along any such information.

She would, wouldn't she. What does she say about that email to Schenck?

In the interview, Mrs. Wright said that while she did not have her calendars from those days, she believed the night in question involved a dinner at the Alitos’ home during which she fell ill. She said that the justice drove her and her husband back to her hotel, and that this might have been the news she wanted to share with Mr. Schenck.

Interesting news! I'm sure he was dying to know about THAT. And of course, being top secret, it would need to be relayed over the phone and not by email! 

Sure, hon.  Whatever.

The minister said that after he learned the outcome from Mrs. Wright in a phone call, he froze. He knew that pending decisions were not supposed to be disclosed, and that sharing the information could hurt everyone involved if it got out.

His wife, Cheryl Schenck, said he was agonized. “The reason I remember is all the stressful machinations on, ‘What should I do with this information?’” Ms. Schenck, a therapist, said in an interview.

Keep it to himself wasn't the obvious answer?

Ultimately, Mr. Schenck could not resist using it, he said. Emails he wrote over the following weeks reflect the advance knowledge he said he had of the Hobby Lobby decision. While the outcome was not surprising — the justices’ questions during oral arguments had hinted at it — Mr. Schenck appeared to know that Justice Alito would author the opinion, even though many court watchers expected Chief Justice Roberts to write it.

[...]

He was still torn, he said, over whether to pass the news to Hobby Lobby’s owners. But Mr. Schenck hoped to further ingratiate himself with the Green family. “I wanted to give them something of value, and perhaps that would engender a reciprocal gift back,” he told The Times.

[...]

When the Hobby Lobby case was argued before the Supreme Court in March 2014, Mrs. Wright and her husband watched from a select spot: seats in the courtroom reserved for guests of Justices Scalia and Alito.

“We were invited to use seats from Nino and Sam,” she had written to Mr. Schenck days earlier, using nicknames for the justices. “Wow!”

Wow, indeed.

Mr. Schenck was not present at the meal and has no written record of his conversation with Mrs. Wright. But The Times interviewed four people who said he told them years ago about the breach, and emails from June 2014 show him suggesting he had confidential information and directing his staff to prepare for victory. In another email, sent in 2017, he described the disclosure as “one of the most difficult secrets I’ve ever kept in my life.”

[...]

It is unclear if Mr. Schenck’s efforts [to curry Court favor for religious issues] had any impact on legal decisions, given that only Justices Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas proved amenable to the outreach, records show, and they were already inclined to overturn Roe v. Wade.

[...]

Kaitlynn Rivera, who worked for Faith and Action from 2013 to 2015, confirmed many details Mr. Schenck provided, including about the donor couples and his relationships at the court. To supporters, the minister boasted about his group’s connections, but he regularly warned them to keep quiet because he “knew the public at large would be upset by that kind of access,” she said in an interview.

[...]

Mr. Schenck, 64, has shifted his views on abortion in recent years, alienating him from many of his former associates, and is trying to re-establish himself, now as a progressive evangelical leader. His decision to speak out now about the Hobby Lobby episode, he said, stems from his regret about the actions that he claims led to his advance knowledge about the case.

“What we did,” he said, “was wrong.”

[...]

He now regrets the tactics he once employed, saying he had used women and babies as props. “In all of my rhetoric about humanizing the fetus, I had very much dehumanized others,” he said in the interview.

What happened? Did he have a daughter who needed an abortion? While I will grant him an acknowledgement that blowing the whistle is commendable, I don't feel any desire to cut him more slack. The article lays out the shit he pulled over the years if you're interested in detail.

Even when his group was most active at the court, he said, “I would look up at that phrase that’s chiseled into the building itself, ‘Equal Justice Under Law,’” he recalled. “I would think, ‘Not really.’”

The wall we need to rebuild is the one between church and state.

Impeach Sam Alito. And while you're at it, impeach Clarence Thomas, too. Both are unqualified for the Supreme Court due to enormous character flaws and extreme assholery. Scalia conveniently died, so unless we can impeach posthumously, leave him to rot in his grave.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

UPDATE:

UPDATE:  Senate Judiciary Committee is reviewing the claim.

UPDATE: Senator Whitehouse pulling no punches:

UPDATE 11/29:  SCOTUS responds to Whitehouse and Johnson: Nothing to see here.  "Social hospitality" is allowed.

UPDATE 01/19/2023:

LOL