Mollie Hemingway is the editor in chief at the Federalist and is known for her in-depth reporting on the Supreme Court.
On a recent episode of “Relatable” with Allie Beth Stuckey, Hemingway shared insider information about the wild circumstances leading up to the Dobbs decision — the landmark U.S. case that overturned Roe v. Wade and pushed abortion back to the states — including the Supreme Court justice who threw an epic tantrum behind closed doors.
“Everyone knew that [Roe v. Wade] was a problem. Everyone knew from the moment it was decided,” Hemingway says. “Even people on the left admitted this case, this decision isn’t even trying to be constitutional law. … But then because the left so greatly wanted to believe that they had a right to kill unborn children, they just moved heaven and earth to keep that decision, even when it shouldn’t have really been lasting for one year, much less 50 years.”
When the Court finally decided to hear the long overdue case, five justices were in favor of overturning the ruling. Justice Samuel Alito was assigned by Clarence Thomas to write the majority opinion.
What Alito produced was a “masterpiece work” — so much so that the dissenting judges were “shocked by how exhaustive it was.”
“There was no argument left standing,” Hemingway says.
Three months after the initial distribution, however, Alito’s draft opinion was infamously leaked, igniting a furious uproar among the left.
“We know that immediately the justices faced death threats, serious threats on their lives. They all had to be moved or be under a great deal of protection, increase their security posture,” Hemingway says, “because if any one of them had been killed … that would have meant that the Dobbs decision would not have been handed down in the way it was. There would no longer have been a majority there.”
Allie and Hemingway speculate that this could have been the sinister intention of the leaker — to either get a justice killed or “gin up” enough outrage to pressure the weaker judges to join the dissent and eliminate the majority.
But none of the majority justices relented, despite the threats on their lives.
After the leak and the subsequent threats, the dissenting justices still hadn’t written their dissent.
“They were delaying the dissemination of this,” Hemingway says.
This was problematic because the majority justices were facing death threats.
“Alito asks if they can wrap it up because left-wing activists have a motivation to kill them, and that’s a concern to the conservative justices, and they wouldn’t,” Hemingway recounts.
Justice Neil Gorsuch requested that the dissenting justices at least give them a date by which they’d have their dissent complete, but they refused.
Justice Stephen Breyer, however, while on the dissenting side, was “the person most likely” to write an opinion that would expedite the process, Hemingway says, because “he was a decent, nice guy who cared about his colleagues.”
“According to my sources, Kagan goes to his chambers and screams at him not to in any way accommodate this request. As one person put it, ‘The walls were shaking,’” Hemingway shares.
Eventually, the dissenting justices relented and agreed to have their dissent ready by June 1.
“Meaning that the [concurring] justices would only have their lives threatened on a continuous day-to-day basis for one month,” Hemingway says.
However, when they finally delivered their dissent, they included a “totally unnecessary” reference to “a New York State rifle decision.”
“So they put that in there just so that they could delay it even further,” Hemingway says, noting that the final Dobbs decision wasn’t released until June 24.
“This is day-to-day attacks on these justices’ lives. You have Amy Coney Barrett having to put on a bulletproof vest in front of her children. You have justices being moved to secure locations or having to greatly increase their security fencing,” she continues, “and it seemed to the justices and their staff that the left-wing justices really didn’t care about what they were going through.”
To hear more of the interview, watch the episode above.
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