Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas argued on Friday that the leaking of the SCOTUS draft overturning abortion rights damages public trust in the high court and among the justices.
“When you lose that trust, especially in the institution that I’m in, it changes the institution fundamentally. You begin to look over your shoulder. It’s like kind of an infidelity – that you can explain it but you can’t undo it,” Thomas said at a conference in Dallas.
“I’ve been in this business long enough to know just how fragile [trust in institution] is,” Thomas said. “And the institution that I’m a part of, if someone said that one line of one opinion would be leaked by anyone, and you would say that, ‘Oh, that’s impossible. No one would ever do that.'”
He also wondered how long institutions like the Supreme Court will be around “at the rate we’re undermining them.”
The leaked draft, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, shows the court overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that legalized abortion nationwide. Thomas joined Alito and Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch to uphold a Mississippi law that would ban almost all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, which would dismantle Roe.
Chief Justice John Roberts has ordered the marshal of the court to open an investigation to find out the source of the leak. In a statement, the court confirmed the authenticity of the leaked draft but said it does “not represent a decision by the Court.”
