Justice Alito warned Tuesday that the leak of the Supreme Court opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade endangered his life and the lives of his conservative colleagues on the bench.
The unauthorized release of the opinion made the conservative justices “targets for assassination,” Alito said during an event at The Heritage Foundation.
“The leak also made those of us who were thought to be in the majority in support of overruling Roe and Casey targets for assassination because it gave people a rational reason to think they could prevent that from happening by killing one of us. And we know that,” he said. The leaker still has not been identified, months into an investigation by the marshal of the Court.
In June, a 26-year-old California man traveled to the home of Justice Kavanaugh intent on killing him but decided against entering the house when he saw federal marshals stationed outside. The man said he was motivated at least partly by the premature news that the High Court would reverse the federal right to abortion. He also expressed disgust over the court’s ruling in a Second Amendment case that restored significant concealed-carry liberties in New York.
While Nicholas Roske’s plot was foiled by police, an FBI search-warrant application obtained by Fox News revealed that Roske allegedly intended to target at least two other unnamed members of the Court. At the scene in front of Kavanaugh’s house, authorities found a Glock 17 handgun with two magazines and ammunition, a tactical knife, pepper spray, zip ties, a hammer, a screwdriver, and other gear in his backpack.
In the immediate aftermath of the Dobbs leak, multiple pro-abortion activist groups held protests in front of the conservative justices’ homes in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia for weeks, sometimes resorting to intimidation tactics.
Alito said the leak, the culprit of which is still unknown, was an unprecedented breach of trust by someone internally, as it put the justices in harm’s way and undermined the integrity of the institution. It seemed designed to pressure the justices to switch their votes in the final opinion.
“It was a grave betrayal of trust by somebody, and it was a shock because nothing like that had happened in the past, so it certainly changed the atmosphere at the court for the remainder of last term,” he noted.
He suggested that the leak changed the dynamic on the Court but that the nine members have always been capable of maintaining civility and even friendship despite differences in their judicial philosophies.
“You can see by reading those opinions, we sometimes disagree pretty passionately about the law,” he added. “And we have not in recent years been all that restrained about the times in which we express our disagreement. I’m as guilty as others probably on this score. But none of that is personal. And that is something that I think I wish the public understood.”