Supreme Court says leaked abortion draft is authentic; Roberts orders investigation into leak

Pro-abortion and anti-abortion demonstrators protest outside the U.S. Supreme Court docket after the leak of a draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito making ready for a majority of the courtroom to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion rights resolution later this yr, in Washington, U.S., Could 3, 2022. 

Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on Tuesday confirmed the authenticity of a leaked draft courtroom opinion that will toss out longstanding abortion rights, however noted that is not the courtroom's closing resolution.

Roberts ordered an investigation into the leaker.

"To the extent this betrayal of the confidences of the Court docket was supposed to undermine the integrity of our operations, it is not going to succeed," the chief justice said in a press release. "The work of the Courtroom is not going to be affected in any manner."

"I have directed the Marshal of the Court docket to launch an investigation into the source of the leak," Roberts said.

The advance publication of a draft opinion is virtually unprecedented for the high court, the place leaks of any type are exceedingly uncommon.

The courtroom shares drafts of opinions internally long earlier than they are issued publicly, Roberts noted, calling it "a routine and important part of the Courtroom's confidential deliberative work."

The draft in this high-profile abortion case was created in February, in line with Politico, which obtained the opinion.

The justices, regulation clerks and other employees of the courtroom are "intensely loyal to the institution and devoted to the rule of law," Roberts stated.

"Court docket employees have an exemplary and important custom of respecting the confidentiality of the judicial process and upholding the trust of the Courtroom. This was a singular and egregious breach of that trust that's an affront to the Court docket and the community of public servants who work right here," he said.

The publication of the draft opinion rocked Washington, triggering waves of shock and fury from Democrats who at the moment are pushing for Congress to immediately codify abortion rights by laws.

Republicans decried the leak itself, and plenty of referred to as for the kind of investigation the Roberts introduced late Tuesday morning. The GOP lawmakers who commented on the draft opinion praised it for placing decisions about abortion in the fingers of states as a substitute of the federal government.

The 98-page draft opinion was penned by Justice Samuel Alito, one in all six conservatives on a court docket that has moved sharply to the precise in the wake of the Trump administration.

Alito's draft would toss out the precedent set by the 1973 case Roe v. Wade and reaffirmed in 1992 by Deliberate Parenthood v. Casey. These pivotal rulings protect the right to get an abortion before the purpose of fetal viability and require that rules limiting abortion entry do not pose an "undue burden."

Alito wrote: "We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled."

The draft of the opinion of the court docket in Dobbs v. Jackson Girls's Health Organization would side with the state of Mississippi in defense of a law that might ban virtually all abortions after 15 weeks of being pregnant.

Lower federal courts had blocked the legislation on the grounds that it violates the protections established by the Roe and Casey selections.

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