The case of Ginni Thomas: The case against the alleged leak of a landmark anti-abortion opinion from Hobby Lobby

Mary is the author of the book “Dollars for Life: The Anti-Abortion movement and the fall of the Republican Establishment.” Her own views are expressed here. CNN has opinions on it.

The New York Times article on the court’s alleged leak will deal the court’s reputation another blow. The court should bring politics into its decision making but a growing number of voters believe the court is a partisan institution.

Earlier this year, there were revelations that Ginni Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, had been trying to get former White House chief of staff Mark meadows to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Clarence Thomas did not have to recound himself from cases relating to the 2020 election, despite some legal experts suggesting so. Before meeting with the committee on January 6, Ginni Thomas made a statement that she never discussed her campaign activities with her husband.

After the May leak of a landmark opinion on abortion, Schenck came up with his own story of a possible leak when he wrote a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts.

By the end of the summer, the court’s reputation had taken a nosedive, but the conservative justices hardly seemed to care. They believed they were insulated from the will of the people.

Just look at what happened with Dobbs: Despite months of controversy and plummeting poll numbers, the court released an opinion reversing Roe that was functionally identical to the one leaked in May. The author of the Dobbs opinion, Samuel Alito, suggested that he didn’t need to worry about what Americans think about the court.

If justices care about the legitimacy of the court they will care about this latest bombshell about anti-abortion groups allegedly getting tipped off about ayet to be-released blockbuster ruling.

Several friends of Schenck said he told the same story about the Hobby Lobby ruling when his sources received news about it. According to the Times, Schenck had inside information that he expected his side to win the case.

The so-called contraceptive mandate of theAffordable Care Act is the subject of a challenge by the arts and crafts business Hobby Lobby. The owners of some businesses argued that forcing employers to cover birth control was against their rights because it was actually abortion-inducing drugs.

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In a statement the Supreme Court provided to CNN on Saturday, Alito called the tipoff allegations concerning the dinner conversation “completely false.”

The donor cited by Schenck in an interview with CNN denied any claims of receiving information about the ruling, but admitted that she and her husband dined at Alito’s home.

It hasn’t always been this way. In the 1970s, Americans’ trust in government institutions shattered in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and revelations about then-President Richard Nixon’s involvement in Watergate, a break-in to the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee and subsequent cover-up. The Supreme Court was an exception.

Donald Trump had a view that was vastly different on his watch. Trump promised his nominees that they would guarantee the reversal of the contraceptive law, and that’s what he did.

According to an NPR report, with three Trump nominees on the court, the justices delivered the most conservative wins since 1931.

And it wasn’t just the number of wins — it was how far to the right the court moved. The justices allowed displays of religious faith from public school teachers and coaches and opened the door to more public funding for religious schools.

The court also hamstrung the Environmental Protection Agency and cast doubt on the power of other agencies, created a super-right to bear arms that would make it hard to pass any gun regulations and eliminated the right to abortion, even rejecting the argument that abortion restrictions constituted sex discrimination in violation of the Equal Protection Clause — a claim that neither the petitioners nor the respondents in the case had raised.

The court’s conservative majority made no apologies for the revolution it was working in the law even though it was unpopular.

In truth, the justices have never been successful in removing a justice through impeachment. But historically, there were other ways to hold the court accountable — threats to strip the court of jurisdiction, changing the number of justices or even just ignoring the justices’ rulings.

They worked to bolster the justices’ conservative views on issues including abortion and same-sex marriage, he said, sometimes achieving a rare level of access and intimacy with the judges.

At a minimum, doing so creates a horrible impression for Americans promised that the justices will be neutral arbiters of the law. It is a sign of deep corruption. The Code of Conduct for United States Judges doesn’t apply to Supreme Court justices.

Both of those things would be dangerous for American democracy. For everyone to be happy, we have to hope that there is some accountability for the court.

Right-wing Christian activists tried to work their way into the social circles of conservative U.S. Supreme court justices by offering prayers, meals and sometimes even travel.

“Dissenting evangelical” is what Schenck describes himself as now that he led a group called Faith and Action. He claimed to have trained “stealth missionaries” for a project called Operation High Court.

Schenck said that Justice Clarence Thomas told him to keep doing what he was doing.

Schenck said the donor gave him information weeks before the decision was released, so he was able to prepare a response in advance. Alito wrote the majority opinion in both that case and the Dobbs decision on abortion this summer.

Republican members of the Judiciary Committee, including ranking member Jim Jordan of Ohio, expressed skepticism about Schenck’s story, which Jordan described as “8-year-old second-hand hearsay.”

Jordan noted that both the donor, Gayle Wright, and Justice Alito have denied being involved in leaking the information, and questioned Schenck’s motives for coming forward with the story.

In recent years, Schenck has said publicly that his political views have changed significantly and that he now opposes what he calls “extreme” restrictions on abortion.

The leak of the name of one of the country’s most prominent Republicans has led to rampant speculation who might have been responsible. Some on both sides of the abortion issue pointed fingers at each other.

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Democrats proposed legislation that would require a code of ethics on the justices, but they were unable to pass it. The newly divided Congress would likely have an even harder time rejecting such proposals.

The leak of the Dobbs opinion, made even more troubling due to the fact that it happened earlier this year, should not be the key lesson from the Rev. Schenck’s story according to Chairman Jerry Nadler. Supreme Court justices can’t police their ethics themselves, according to the moral of the story. They should not be expected to.

Advocates for reform argue the justices should be subject to disclosure rules for gifts and clear criteria for recusing themselves from cases that could affect their family members or close associates.

In addition to whatever action Congress might take, Justice Roberts also has ordered an internal investigation into the source of the Dobbs leak in. It’s unclear when that probe will be completed or if the results will be made public.