Leak of Supreme Court Opinion on Abortion Law Is ‘Judicial Insurrection’: DeSantis

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in April 2022. Courtesy of the Florida Governor's Office

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has characterized the recent leak of a U.S. Supreme Court draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade as a “judicial insurrection.”

“To have that leak out the way it did was really unprecedented,” DeSantis said during a May 3 press conference. “And I think it was really an attack on a lot of the justices. I think it was an intentional thing to try to whip up a lot of the public, to try to make it very political, potentially try to bully them into changing one of their positions. And that is not something that’s appropriate for the judicial branch.”

According to the leaked draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito, the court voted to strike down the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that classified abortion as an unenumerated constitutional right, which prohibited state governments from passing laws restricting the procedure. The court also decided to overrule the 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey that upheld Roe v. Wade.

In the draft opinion, Alito writes that Roe was “egregiously wrong from the start” and that both Roe and Casey must be overruled. Roe’s reasoning was “exceptionally weak” and the decision has had “damaging consequences.” It was time to “heed the constitution” and return the issue of abortion to the representatives elected by the people, Alito wrote.

“The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely—the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,” the court opinion (pdf) states.

“That provision has been held to guarantee some rights that are not mentioned in the Constitution, but any such right must be ‘deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and tradition’ and ‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.'”

Chief Justice John Roberts has called on the Supreme Court marshal to investigate the leak. In his press conference, DeSantis insisted that the person who revealed the court document must be “held accountable” as the incident is a “real, significant breach of trust.”

DeSantis said leaking the document was possibly an attempt to “kneecap a potential majority through extra-constitutional means,” he added.

DeSantis stressed that he believes in “pro-life protections” and that such protections are based on science and “who we are as a society.” DeSantis recently signed a bill that bans most abortions in Florida after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Over 20 states are poised to ban abortions once the Supreme Court overturns Roe, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion research group.

If the court’s draft opinion is finalized and Roe is overturned, states that continue to allow abortion could see a large influx of women seeking the procedure.

For instance, Planned Parenthood has stated that in the last four months of 2021, after Texas instituted a ban on abortions beyond six weeks of pregnancy, abortion clinics in nearby states saw an almost 800 percent rise in patients from Texas compared to the same period in 2020.