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US Lawmakers Brace for Fight Over Abortion Rights

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Biden Blasts US Supreme Court’s Draft Opinion on Abortion

High court may overturn Roe v. Wade, landmark ruling that legalized abortion in US, and leave decision to state legislators
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Explainer: The Leak of Supreme Court’s Draft Roe v. Wade Reversal

Late Monday, the American news website Politico dropped a bombshell: A draft of a Supreme Court majority opinion it had obtained revealed that the court was set to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that legalized abortion in the United States in 1973.

The leak of a highly anticipated court opinion, unprecedented in modern history, set off a political firestorm in Washington and protests across the country. Democrats denounced the leaked draft decision as “the greatest restriction of rights in over 50 years” and vowed to pass legislation to protect abortion rights. Republicans cheered the reported opinion written by conservative Justice Samuel Alito while accusing the “radical left” of “bullying” Supreme Court justices.

In a city where the executive and legislative branches of government routinely leak information to the press, the Supreme Court has long enjoyed a reputation as one of a handful of relatively leak-free institutions.

And while some recent internal high court deliberations have been released to the press, never before has a draft opinion been leaked in its entirety prior to its announcement.

Chief Justice John Roberts, who, according to Politico, had yet to endorse the majority opinion by Alito and four other conservative justices, issued a stark condemnation of the leak.

“This was a singular and egregious breach of that trust that is an affront to the Court and the community of public servants who work here,” he said in a statement.

At the heart of the Supreme Court case is a Mississippi law that prohibits performing abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. During oral arguments in December, the court’s conservative justices appeared willing to uphold the law without signaling they were united in overturning the 1973 decision.

Here are some of the most frequently asked questions about the Supreme Court leak:

How rare are leaks of Supreme Court decisions?’

Extremely rare. The court keeps its internal deliberations and proceedings confidential to shield the justices from public pressure.

However, while court opinions have not been leaked in modern times, unauthorized releases of court decisions and deliberations date back to the mid-19th century, according to University of Georgia media law professor Jonathan Peters.

In 1852, the New-York Tribune reported the outcome of a court decision 10 days before its official announcement, Peters tweeted late Monday.

In 1972, The Washington Post reported details of the court’s internal deliberations in the Roe v. Wade case before the justices announced their decision. 

And in 2012, CBS News reported how Roberts initially sided with the court’s conservative wing before voting to uphold key provisions of the Affordable Care Act. 

But those leaks pale in comparison to what was given to Politico, experts say.

“There’s been leaks in the past of how a case might turn out for some internal deliberations of the court. But in terms of a fully baked 98-page majority opinion with citations, with all the notations of how a Supreme Court opinion looks and the outcome, this has never happened before,” said Gabe Roth, executive director of the nonpartisan Fix the Court.

Who might have leaked the document?

In a statement, Roberts ordered the Marshal of the U.S. Supreme Court — the court’s internal police force that protects the justices and the building — to investigate the leak. Colonel Gail A. Curley is the current marshal.

Sarah Parshall Perry, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, told VOA the Supreme Court’s internal police has “all the authority to enforce both federal and District of Columbia laws that may have been broken with this leak of an opinion.”

But Roth is skeptical that the culprit could be exposed.

About 50 to 100 people could have had access to the leaked document, including the nine justices, 37 clerks, administrative employees, building staff and security guards, he said.

“I don’t know if we’ll ever get to the bottom of who might have leaked the copy to Politico,” Roth told VOA.

Were any crimes committed?

It’s not clear whether the leak involved any criminal violations. If an authorized person accessed and leaked the court document, charges could potentially involve theft of government property, but there are no indications that a person authorized to access the document shared the draft with Politico.

However, Supreme Court opinions, unlike many other government documents, are not classified, but the court’s deliberations and draft decisions are understood to be confidential, Perry said.

Moreover, leaking a draft opinion for the purpose of swaying justices could be a “serious offense,” said Richard Painter, a former White House ethics czar who is now a law professor at the University of Minnesota.

If a Supreme Court justice was involved in leaking the document, he or she could face impeachment by Congress.

Only one justice — Samuel Chase in the early 19th century — has ever been impeached, but none has been convicted and removed from the bench, according to Roth.

Will the public outcry change the final decision?

Highly unlikely. In a statement, Roberts said the leaked document “does not represent a decision by the Court or the final position of any member on the issues in the case.”

While justices sometimes change how they vote in a case, some experts say the leak has made it more unlikely that the five conservatives on the court will walk back their apparent support for overturning Roe v. Wade, along with a 1992 case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

Supreme Court justices, Painter noted, “never want to be perceived as bowing to public pressure.”

In recent months, Roberts was believed to be seeking a middle ground that would endorse the law without overturning Roe v. Wade. But after the leak, he may join the other conservatives on the court in overturning the decision, Perry said.

“He did try to seek a middle ground,” she said. “We might, for example, see a 5-3-1. But based on his very strenuous statement that this is not going to have an effect on how they are ruling, I am inclined to believe that we might have actually gained Chief Justice Roberts, when before this leak, we might not have had him.
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DC Reaches $750,000 Settlement in Trump Inauguration Lawsuit

Former President Donald Trump’s businesses and inaugural committee have reached a deal to pay Washington, D.C., $750,000 to resolve a lawsuit that alleged the committee overpaid for events at his hotel and enriched the former president’s family in the process, according to the District of Columbia’s attorney general. 

Attorney General Karl Racine announced the settlement agreement in the case against the Presidential Inaugural Committee, the Trump Organization and the Trump International Hotel in Washington in a tweet on Tuesday. The document had not yet been signed by a judge. 

The agreement says the case is being resolved “to avoid the cost, burden, and risks of further litigation” and that the organizations “dispute these allegations on numerous grounds and deny having engaged in any wrongdoing or unlawful conduct.” 

As part of the agreement, the defendants will pay the District of Columbia a total of $750,000, which will be used to benefit three nonprofit organizations, the settlement paperwork says. 

“We’re resolving our lawsuit and sending the message that if you violate DC nonprofit law—no matter how powerful you are—you’ll pay,” Racine said in a tweet. 

In a statement, Trump blasted Racine and noted that the settlement includes no admission of guilt or liability. 

“As crime rates are soaring in our Nation’s Capital, it is necessary that the Attorney General focus on those issues rather than a further leg of the greatest Witch-Hunt in political history,” Trump said. “This was yet another example of weaponizing Law Enforcement against the Republican Party and, in particular, the former President of the United States.” 

Racine has said the committee misused nonprofit funds and coordinated with the hotel’s management and members of the Trump family to arrange the events. He said one of the event’s planners raised concerns about pricing with Trump, the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump and Rick Gates, a top campaign official at the time. 

The committee has maintained that its finances were independently audited, and that all money was spent in accordance with the law. The committee raised an unprecedented $107 million to host events celebrating Trump’s inauguration in January 2017. But the committee’s spending has drawn mounting scrutiny. 

Gates, a former Trump campaign aide who cooperated in the special counsel’s Russia investigation, personally managed discussions with the hotel about using the space, including ballrooms and meeting rooms, the attorney general’s office has said. In one instance, Gates contacted Ivanka Trump and told her that he was “a bit worried about the optics” of the committee paying such a high fee, Racine said. 

Prosecutors say the committee could have hosted inaugural events at other venues either for free or for reduced costs but didn’t consider those options. 
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Report: Draft Opinion Shows US Supreme Court to Overturn Abortion Rights

In a rare leak from the highest court in the U.S., Politico reported it has obtained a draft Supreme Court opinion showing a majority of the court in favor of striking down the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide. 

The document, labeled as a “1st Draft” by Justice Samuel Alito and circulated among the other justices in February, represents a breach in the highly secretive deliberation process among the justices in which their decisions are unknown until the rulings are officially issued. 

Those positions can change during the deliberation process, even after the drafting of a majority opinion, and the final ruling is expected before the court finishes its current term in late June or early July. 

At stake is the issue of abortion rights in the United States, which since the Roe decision have been protected on a national level and reaffirmed in the 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey. 

A Supreme Court spokesperson declined to comment. 

Public opinion polls in show a majority of the U.S. public favors abortions being legal either in most or all cases. 

“If the Supreme Court does indeed issue a majority opinion along the lines of the leaked draft authored by Justice Alito, the shift in the tectonic plates of abortion rights will be as significant as any opinion the Court has ever issued,” American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Anthony Romero said in a statement late Monday. “It would deprive half the nation of a fundamental, constitutional right that has been enjoyed by millions of women for over 50 years.” 

Alito is one of six conservative justices on the nine-person court and overturning Roe has been a longtime goal of social conservatives in the United States. 

“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences,” the draft opinion says. 

The justices are deciding on the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which involves the state of Mississippi’s ban on most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. 

A federal appeals court ruled against Mississippi, saying its timeframe went against the standards set in Roe and Casey that allow a mother to terminate a pregnancy without state interference before a fetus is viable outside the womb. 

The draft opinion rejects the limits on state authority in the Roe and Casey decisions, saying state lawmakers should be the ones to decide what is legal in their state. 

“Abortion presents a profound moral question,” the draft says. “The Constitution does not prohibit citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion. Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. We now overrule those decisions and return that authority to the people and their elected representatives.” 

Politico said it received a copy of the 98-page draft decision “from a person familiar with the court’s proceedings in the Mississippi case along with other details supporting the authenticity of the document.” 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 
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