The Senate Judiciary will hear the 2014 violation claim

Senate Judiciary Committee Dick Durbin Chair (D-Ill.) announced his committee is reviewing “serious allegations” in a New York Times report Saturday that a 2014 Supreme Court decision was leaked to a former anti-abortion activist weeks in advance.

The last one: Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Congressman Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), who chair the Judiciary Subcommittees, wrote to the Supreme Court’s chief justice John Roberts to ask if any action had been taken on the alleged 2014 leak and offered to investigate if not, A politician first reported Sunday evening.

• “If the Court, as your letter suggests, is unwilling to undertake fact-finding investigations into possible ethics violations, that leaves Congress as the only forum,” they wrote in reference to earlier correspondence with Roberts. about the reports that a religious group had supposedly tried to influence justice.

News Movement: Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the majority opinions in both the 2014 Hobby Lobby contraception and religious liberty case and expired design opinion of the Supreme Court’s annulment decision Roe v. Wadehas said every suggestion he or his wife has revealed the 2014 decision early to anyone what “fake”.

• Former anti-abortion leader the Rev. Rob Schenck told the NYT that Gail Wright, a donor to the evangelical organization he then led, informed him of the decision. Wright, however, “denied receiving or transmitting such information,” the NYT reports.

What are they saying: Whitehouse and Johnson (D-Ga.) joined Durbin in urging their fellow members of Congress to pass legislation requiring a code of ethics for Supreme Court justices, AP reported Sunday night.

• In a statement, the MPs urged the NYT report “another black mark on the Supreme Court’s increasingly tarnished ethics record” and vowed to “get to the bottom of these serious allegations,” according to the AP.

Read the letter from Sen. Whitehouse and Rep. Johnson to Chief Justice Roberts, obtained by Politico, via DocumentCloud:

Editor’s note: This article has been updated with details of the letter from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Rep. Hank Johnson to Chief Justice John Roberts.