Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito Denies Report That He Leaked 2014 Decision

The Senate Judiciary Committee is looking into an alleged leak of a 2014 Supreme Court case decision written by Justice Samuel Alito, after the New York Times reported over the weekend that Alito or his wife had revealed the decision before it was publically released.

“The Senate Judiciary Committee is reviewing these serious allegations, which highlight once again the inexcusable ‘Supreme Court loophole’ in federal judicial ethics rules,” a statement from Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) read. “It is unacceptable that members of the highest court in the land are exempted from the judicial code of ethics when wealthy special interests are spending millions of dollars in dark money to influence the Court’s decisions.”

The case, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, dealt with healthcare coverage of contraception. In the Times article, Rev. Rob Schenck claimed he was made aware of the 5-4 decision and Alito’s religious argument weeks before the decision went public.

Schenck said he had heard the case’s outcome from Gayle Wright, who was a donor to an organization that he was a part of which made an effort to create religious connections with justices. Schenck said that Wright had shared a meal with the Alitos and relayed the news to him afterward.

Wright, however, told the Times that she neither heard the information from the Alitos nor passed along the content of the decision to Schenck.

Alito also rejected the claim.

“My wife and I became acquainted with the Wrights some years ago because of their strong support for the Supreme Court Historical Society, and since then, we have had a casual and purely social relationship,” Alito said in a statement. “I never detected any effort on the part of the Wrights to obtain confidential information or to influence anything that I did in either an official or private capacity, and I would have strongly objected if they had done so. I have no knowledge of any project that they allegedly undertook for ‘Faith and Action,’ ‘Faith and Liberty,’ or any similar group, and I would be shocked and offended if those allegations are true.”

This comes after the well-known Supreme Court leak earlier this year, in which the decision regarding the overturn of Roe v. Wade was leaked weeks prior to its slated date. Justice Alito was also the author of that decision.