Supreme Court Leak Meant to Force Change to Abortion Decision: Hawley

Sen. Joshua Hawley (R-Mo.) on Capitol Hill in Washington on Oct. 14, 2020. Greg Nash/Getty Images

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said that documents purporting to show that the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) will overturn Roe v. Wade were leaked to try and force SCOTUS to change course.

The draft of the SCOTUS decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was leaked to Politico in an unprecedented breach of court secrecy and was published on May 2. The documents suggest that SCOTUS will overturn the standard laid out in 1973’s Roe v. Wade, which required states to allow abortions at least during the first trimester and made provisions to allow abortions in the second and third trimesters for the sake of the life or health of the mother.

In a news release May 3, SCOTUS confirmed that the draft opinion was genuine but that it was not a final decision and that the integrity of the court would not be undermined.

Although the court had not confirmed the authenticity of the draft opinion at the time, Hawley told Fox News’ Sean Hannity during a May 2 appearance: “I have to tell you—it sounds real to me.”

The leak, Hawley added, “is plainly an attempt by the left to try and change the outcome in this case and corrupt the process, and the court must not allow that to happen.”

“This is an unprecedented breach of the court’s confidentiality, and it is plainly meant to corrupt the process within a court,” Hawley continued. “It’s an assault on the court, Sean, and it’s got to be taken seriously.”

Hawley said that Chief Justice John Roberts will have “a lot of work to do” to determine who made the unprecedented leak.

Otherwise, Hawley said he agreed with the reasoning laid out in the draft decision.

“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” conservative Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the court in the alleged majority decision. “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”

“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Alito wrote further down.

Under the terms of the decision, Roe would be overruled and the right to regulate or prohibit abortion would pass again from federal to state choice.

The U.S. Constitution, Hawley said in agreement, is “silent” on abortion and should be left up to the states.

In a tweet, Hawley suggested that the White House, which has decried the decision, may have known about the leak before it was published by Politico.

“Did the White House see the leaked opinion before Politico published it?” Hawley wrote. “Do they know who the leaker is?”

“The clerk who leaked this should be disbarred,” Hawley said in another tweet. “Right after the Court overturns Roe.”

In another tweet, Hawley wrote, “Given the apparently coordinated nature of this hit on the Court, I certainly hope every Democrat Senator is ready to answer whether they saw the opinion before Politico published it, and if they know who leaker is.”

Hawley is not the only GOP lawmaker to decry the leak as a violation of the court’s prestige.

“Last night’s stunning breach was an attack on the independence of the Supreme Court,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) wrote in a tweet. “By every indication, this was yet another escalation in the radical left’s ongoing campaign to bully and intimidate federal judges and substitute mob rule for the rule of law.”

In a statement attached to the tweet, McConnell accused President Joe Biden, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) of “[refusing] to defend judicial independence and the rule of law.” Instead, he said, through their statements on the leak they have “played into this toxic spectacle.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) wrote that the leak was “corrosive to the Court.”

“It is an outrageous consequence of the Democrats’ efforts to undermine the Court!” Cruz added.