Alito: Roe leak made justices ‘targets for assassination’

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito on Tuesday said the May leak of the draft opinion overturning the abortion protections in Roe v. Wade made him and his colleagues “targets for assassinations.”  

“It was a great 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,” Alito said at an event organized by the conservative 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,” Alito, who authored the opinion, added, referring to a separate Supreme Court decision affirming Roe.

He cited a pending case in which a man has been charged with attempting to kill Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who joined Alito in the eventual 6-3 decision to formally overturn Roe in June.

Fellow conservative Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice John Roberts filled out the rest of the majority. Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented. 

The decision came during a contentious term for the court, with justices voting to scale back Miranda rights and throw out a New York gun control law. 

“But that was last term, and now we’re in a new term,” Alito said Tuesday, saying that he and his fellow justices and staff want to return to pre-pandemic, normal operations.  

Justice Stephen Breyer retired from the court this summer, and the Supreme Court opened up its new term this month with newly confirmed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. 

Alito during Tuesday’s event also hit back on the recent scrutiny and criticism of the court’s legitimacy, defending the integrity of the judicial body.

“During my 16 years on the court, the justices have always gotten along very well on a personal level. I think the public, when they read our opinions, probably misses that,” Alito said.  

“You can see by reading those opinions, we sometimes disagree pretty passionately about the law, and we have not in recent years been all that restrained about the terms in which we express our disagreement. I am as guilty as others probably on this score. But none of that is personal. That is something that I think I wish the public understood.” 

Updated at 8:28 a.m.