OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
The U.S. Supreme Court has begun to issue rulings on cases as its current session comes to an end, but one of the most highly anticipated decisions has yet to drop.
Tens of millions of Americans along with activist groups and state legislatures are all eagerly awaiting whether or not the nation’s highest court will hold true to a draft ruling leaked in early May overturning Roe v. Wade or whether some of those justices have been persuaded since to keep the landmark 1973 decision legalizing abortion in all 50 states in place.
Legal and court observers believe that the majority of justices who signed on to the original draft written by Justice Samuel Alito will hold true to their decision and allow states to decide on their own how they want to approach the issue.
The draft opinion, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, stems from a Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks.
“The justices released decisions in multiple cases Monday, but Dobbs was not among them. There’s now approximately a month left in the court’s current term. A ruling in Dobbs is expected to come by either late June or early July,” Fox News reported.
“The court ruled in three cases Monday. One was a bankruptcy law case involving a trustee for the defunct tech store Circuit City, another was a Florida-based case on Medicaid and a third was a labor dispute involving Southwest Airlines and a worker who wanted to sue the airline over allegedly lacking overtime wages rather than go to arbitration,” the report added.
“The Dobbs case stems from a dispute over a Mississippi law which bans abortion after 15 weeks. Argued in December, the case is seen as the biggest test yet for how the new 6-3 Republican-appointed majority on the court – capped with the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett in 2020 – will handle major controversial issues,” the report continued.
After the unprecedented leak of the draft opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts confirmed that the draft was genuine and ordered the court’s marshal to launch an investigation into who was responsible.
Justice Clarence Thomas derided the leak of the Supreme Court draft decision that, if it stands, would end Roe V Wade and warned it could mean the end of the Supreme Court as we know it.
On Friday he spoke to a conference of black conservatives where he compared the leak to “infidelity,” Politico reported.
“I wonder how long we’re going to have these institutions at the rate we’re undermining them, and then I wonder when they’re gone or destabilized what we will have as a country and I don’t think the prospects are good if we continue to lose them,” the 73-year-old Justice said.
“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,” he said.
As he took questions from the audience one person asked him if the court has changed since he was confirmed in 1991.
“This is not the court of that era. I sat with (famously liberal justice) Ruth Ginsburg for almost 30 years and she was actually an easy colleague to deal with… We may have been a dysfunctional family, but we were a family,” the Justice said.
“Anybody who would, for example, have an attitude to leak documents, that is your general attitude, that is your future on the bench,” he said.
He also took aim at the protests that have been happening at the homes of conservative Justices since the leak was published.
“You would never visit Supreme Court justices’ houses when things didn´t go our way. We didn´t throw temper tantrums. I think it is … incumbent on us to always act appropriately and not to repay tit for tat,” he said.
