Supreme Court faces second major leak of internal documents

For the second time in two years, a leak of an internal Supreme Court document has occurred, this time noting Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s communications with his colleagues.

The New York Times reported Sunday that it had obtained a Feb. 22 memo written by the chief justice to his eight colleagues about a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on the federal election interference case against former President Donald Trump.

Chief Justice Roberts called it “inadequate and poorly reasoned,” the Times reported.

“I think it likely that we will view the separation of powers differently,” he wrote, according to the newspaper.

It is the second leak of internal high court documents. In 2022, a draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization suggested that the justices were poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling giving women a national right to abortion. That leak was the first in the high court’s 235-year history.

Weeks after the Dobbs leak, the court overturned Roe and returned jurisdiction over abortion to the states.

The high court has never identified the leaker after a weeks-long internal investigation. Court watchers said the leaker was probably a clerk. If true, that person has long left the court: Each justice gets four fresh clerks each term.

After an eight-month probe, the high court released a report saying the Supreme Court marshal’s team had analyzed forensic evidence and interviewed roughly 100 court employees.

“But the team has to date been unable to identify a person responsible by a preponderance of the evidence,” the January 2023 report read.

Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law, wrote in a blog post on Sunday that the latest leak is even more damaging than the 2022 incident.

He said the New York Times’ reporting relied on insights not just from the leaked memo, but also from anonymous interviews detailing the changing of justices’ votes, authorships of rulings and the inner workings of the chief justice’s office.

“This tapestry would require insights from so many different people. Moreover, all of this comes after the Dobbs leak when Chief Justice Roberts (apparently) put strict limitations on access to Court information. What did all of those measures accomplish? Apparently not much,” Mr. Blackman wrote in a post for The Volokh Conspiracy.

Carrie Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network and a former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas, said the leaks are “deliberately aimed at intimidating and pressuring the originalist justices into changing their opinions on key cases in the future.”

She said if the justices don’t change their positions, they will then be subject to harassment and reputations will be dragged through the mud.

“We are at this unprecedented and dangerous moment because the Left is waging a full-blown political campaign to delegitimize and destroy the Supreme Court so they can exert total control over it,” Ms. Severino posted Monday on X.

A spokesperson for the high court did not immediately respond to a request for comment.