WASHINGTON — U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said the leak of his draft opinion eliminating the constitutional right to abortion made members of the majority “targets for assassination.”
Speaking in Washington at the conservative Heritage Foundation, Alito gave no indication the court has determined who gave the opinion to Politico weeks before its scheduled release, calling the leak a “grave betrayal of trust by somebody.”
He tied the leak to the June arrest of a man outside the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The man, who was charged with attempted murder, was armed and said he wanted to kill Kavanaugh, according to law enforcement officials.
The leak “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,” Alito said, referring to two abortion-rights decisions the court overturned.
Chief Justice John Roberts ordered an investigation into the leak a day after Politico’s May 2 story, but the court hasn’t provided any updates since then.
In a 75-minute conversation with the Heritage Foundation’s John Malcolm, Alito pushed back against Justice Elena Kagan’s suggestion that the court was squandering its legitimacy.
A person “crosses an important line when they say that the court is acting in a way that is illegitimate,” Alito said. “I don’t think anybody in a position of authority should make that claim lightly.”
‘Personal preference’
Kagan, one of three justices in the outnumbered liberal wing, has suggested in a series of recent public appearances that the conservative-dominated court is increasingly appearing like a political body.
“If one judge dies or leaves a court, and another judge comes in, and all of a sudden the law changes on you, what does that say?” she said in September. “You know, that just doesn’t seem a lot like law if it can depend so much on which particular person is on the court. It just seems at that point like all personal preference.”
Alito, 72, also blasted the state of free speech on university campuses, calling it “pretty abysmal,” “disgraceful” and “really dangerous for our future as a united democratic country.”
He defended the 2010 Citizens United campaign finance decision, which struck down contribution limits for corporations and unions. Alito called it a “narrow decision” and said many critics don’t know what the court actually decided.
“It has instead become kind of a lightning rod for everything that a lot of people don’t like about campaign finance and about the way campaigns are conducted,” Alito said. “And certainly there’s a lot to dislike about the way campaigns are conducted, but all of that cannot be attributable to Citizens United.”
