An odd story of alleged sleaze by radical right Supreme Court theocrat justice Sam Alito

Over the last few days, multiple reliable sources have been reporting a strange story about a years-ago pre-public leak of a major US Supreme Court (SC) anti-abortion decision by Sam Alito. Alito is probably the most or second most radical of the Christian nationalist theocrat and brass knuckles capitalist judges on the SC. As far as I can tell, Alito and Clarence Thomas are in the running for the most extreme of the Republicans on the court. Until now, I've resisted posting about this because it’s so odd and possibly not true. 

But, maybe there is mostly truth in this bizarre story. It comes from some years ago, 2014. The key proponent of the story today is the former rabid anti-abortionist evangelical Christian preacher Robert Schenck. In July of 2020, I posted about what Schenck said in a published interview after his mind changed about what he saw going on. He pointed to moral rot in the American evangelical church. By then, had become disillusioned with the church. He flipped against Christian nationalism (CN). Now he is considered to be a whistleblower about American Christian church sleaze.

The Guardian writes:

Rights group calls for Samuel Alito to be investigated 

after claims of leaked 2014 ruling

Anti-abortion activist said supreme court justice revealed the landmark ruling on contraception and religious rights weeks earlier

A civil rights group issued a call Saturday for US supreme court justice Samuel Alito to be investigated over allegations that the judge leaked a 2014 landmark ruling involving contraception and religious rights at a private dinner with wealthy political donors.

The claim was contained in a New York Times article in which minister Rob Schenck, an anti-abortion activist, said he was told of the decision weeks before it was announced and had used the information to prepare a public relations push.

Schenck also claimed he tipped off Hobby Lobby, the craft store chain owned by Christian evangelicals that brought and won the case allowing privately-held, for-profit businesses to be exempt from regulations to which its owners religiously object, in this case requiring employers to cover certain contraceptives for their female employees.

“The Senate judiciary committee should immediately move to investigate the apparent leak by Justice Alito,” said Brian Fallon, the executive director of Demand Justice.

“This bombshell report is the latest proof that the Republican justices on the court are little more than politicians in robes. It’s no wonder trust in the court has hit a record low. Structural reform of the court, including strict new ethics rules, is needed now more than ever.”  

In a letter to supreme court chief justice John G Roberts Jr dated 7 June, Schenck wrote that he was reaching out to the judge “to inform you of a series of events that may impinge on the investigation you and your delegates are undertaking in connection with the leak of a draft opinion”.

He described a dinner at which an unnamed political donor invited to dine at the home of Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann, had offered to try to glean information about the pending decision in the Hobby Lobby case.

The next day, the Times reported, the dining guest called Schenck and told him Alito had written the majority opinion in the case and that Hobby Lobby would win. That exact decision was publicly announced less than a month later.  

Schenck concluded the letter to Roberts by saying he “thought this previous incident might bear some consideration by you and others involved in the process”.

How that directly reflects on the current investigation into the leak of the Dobbs decision is not clear, but it arrives at a time of concern for the court’s legitimacy as it works under the sway of a conservative supermajority. Polls show that a majority of Americans are losing confidence in the supreme court.  

After the leak in May of the Dobbs decision draft, Alito called the unauthorized disclosure “a grave betrayal” and ordered an investigation by the supreme court’s marshal.

The Times noted that Schenck’s account has “gaps”. But the newspaper’s examination of the claim uncovered emails and conversations that “strongly suggested” that Schenck knew of the decision before it was made public.

If Schenck’s story is true, what makes it interesting is the howling outrage that Alito, some other radical right Republican theocrat judges on the Supreme Court and CN Republican elites have expressed about the horrible leak of the June 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned the Roe v. Wade decision. Alito wrote both the Hobby Lobby and Dobbs decisions. The 2014 Hobby Lobby decisions a key case that seriously eroded the separation of church and state.

Initially, I rejected this story as too speculative. But as time passes, it seems more and more plausible. Now, for reasons I cannot articulate, this allegation of sleaze by Alito seems more likely mostly true than not. After all, radical right Republican Party elites, including all six on the Supreme Court, are chronic deceivers and liars. why accord them one shred of credibility?

What do you think? Is this bullshit or mostly real? Seems mostly real to me, certainly plausible.