Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has said that the unprecedented leak of theRoe v Wade draft opinion made the majority justices “targets for assassination”.
Justice Alito, who authored the draft and final version of the landmark ruling that wiped out 50 years of abortion rights for women across America, blasted the breach as he took to the stage at an event in Washington DC organised by right-wing thinktank the Heritage Foundation on Tuesday.
“The leak also made those of us who were thought to be in the majority in support of overruling Roe and Casey targets for assassination because it gave people a rational reason to think they could prevent that from happening by killing one of us,” he said.
The conservative justice did not speculate on the cause of the leak but branded it “a grave betrayal of trust by somebody”.
On 24 June, the US Supreme Court overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade ruling, which had granted millions of Americans the constitutional right to abortion access for the past 50 years.
In the majority opinion ruling – which led to instant abortion bans in several Republican-led states – Justice Alito wrote that Roe and Casey were “egregiously wrong” and “must be overruled”.
The intentions of the conservative-heavy court first came to light around two months earlier when Politico obtained a leaked draft majority opinion on 2 May.
The leak – something that was unprecedented in the history of the court – is still under investigation.
Justice Alito pointed to the alleged assassination plot of his fellow Justice Brett Kavanaugh as an apparent consequence of the leak.
One month on from the leak on 8 June, Nicholas Roske allegedly travelled from his home in California to the Donald Trump-appointed justice’s home in Maryland, in the early hours of the morning to assassinate him and then kill himself.
Police said he had purchased a Glock 17 pistol and was armed with the firearm, two magazines and ammunition when he was captured outside Justice Kavanaugh’s home.
The 26-year-old called 911 on himself outside the property, reportedly confessing his intentions and saying he needed “psychiatric help”, police said.
Following his arrest, Mr Roske allegedly told investigators that he was angry with the conservative justice over the draft opinion striking down Roe v Wade.
He has been charged with attempted murder.
Justice Alito also appeared to take aim at his liberal counterpart Justice Elena Kagan, who has been outspoken about the conservative majority’s ruling.
At an event in September she warned that the justices’ personal political views were spilling into their rulings – something that contradicts the court’s purpose and threatens to damage its standing in the eyes of the American people.
“When courts become extensions of the political process, when people see them as extensions of the political process, when people see them as trying just to impose personal preferences on a society irrespective of the law, that’s when there’s a problem — and that’s when there ought to be a problem,” she said.
Though not naming her directly, Justice Alito slammed the liberal justice for questioning the court’s legitimacy.
“Everybody is free to criticise our reasoning, and in strong terms … But to say the court is exhibiting lack of integrity is something quite different,” he said.
“Someone also crosses an important line when they say that the court is acting in a way that is illegitimate. I don’t think that anybody in a position of authority should make that claim lightly.”
Recent polls have shown that the court’s public approval has plummeted in recent months.
While the court make-up is clear to see – with six conservative and three liberal justices – the decision to overturn abortion rights was somewhat unexpected.
During their confirmation hearings, Justices Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch both swore under oath that they believed the ruling was settled legal precedent and that they would not vote to overturn it.
Yet, all six conservative justices voted to uphold Mississippi’s abortion restriction in Dobbs v Jackson and, in the process, five – excluding Chief Justice John Roberts – voted to strike down the 1973 Roe ruling which guaranteed a constitutional right to abortion and the 1992 Planned Parenthood v Casey ruling which had further cemented that right.
