As the Supreme Court investigates the extraordinary leak this spring of a draft opinion of the decision overturning Roe v. Wade, a former anti-abortion leader has come forward claiming that another breach occurred in a 2014 landmark case involving contraception and religious rights.
The minister’s account comes at a time of rising concerns about the court’s legitimacy. A majority of Americans are losing confidence in the institution, polls show, and its approval ratings are at a historic low. Critics charge that the court has become increasingly politicized, especially as a new conservative supermajority holds sway.
Alito, in a statement issued through the court’s spokesperson, denied disclosing the decision. He said that he and his wife shared a “casual and purely social relationship” with the Wrights and did not dispute that the two couples ate together June 3, 2014. But the justice said that the “allegation that the Wrights were told the outcome of the decision in the Hobby Lobby case, or the authorship of the opinion of the Court, by me or my wife, is completely false.
Schenck recruited wealthy donors like Wright and her husband, Donald, encouraging them to invite some of the justices to meals, to their vacation homes or to private clubs. He advised allies to contribute money to the Supreme Court Historical Society and then mingle with justices at its functions. He ingratiated himself with court officials who could help give him access, records show.
In the interview, Wright said she used such seats “all the time” because “Nino and my husband were very good friends.” She was eager to hear the Hobby Lobby arguments, she added, because she had an interest in “all cases related to biblical issues.”He had long been an ends-justify-the-means anti-abortion provocateur. During the 1992 Democratic convention, he plotted a stunt to accost future President Bill Clinton with an aborted fetus in a container.
He wanted to gain access himself — but because he was a controversial figure, he also recruited couples who were less likely to draw notice. His leading players were Wright and her husband, a real estate developer and philanthropist from Centerville, Ohio. They got involved in his work “to have a major impact on the attitudes and actions of those in a position to shape and interpret our laws,” they wrote in a 2001 newsletter.
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