The disclosure of Alito’s draft majority opinion – a rare breach of Supreme Court secrecy and tradition around its deliberations – comes as all sides in the abortion debate are girding for the ruling. The appearances and timing of this draft are consistent with court practice. The document is replete with citations to previous court decisions, books and other authorities, and includes 118 footnotes.
The draft opinion runs 98 pages, including a 31-page appendix of historical state abortion laws. POLITICO received a copy of the draft opinion from a person familiar with the court’s proceedings in the Mississippi case along with other details supporting the authenticity of the document. If the Alito draft is adopted, it would rule in favor of Mississippi in the closely watched case over that state’s attempt to ban most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.Ī Supreme Court spokesperson declined to comment or make another representative of the court available to answer questions about the draft document. The document, labeled as a first draft of the majority opinion, includes a notation that it was circulated among the justices on Feb. How Chief Justice John Roberts will ultimately vote, and whether he will join an already written opinion or draft his own, is unclear. The three Democratic-appointed justices – Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan – are working on one or more dissents, according to the person. The court’s holding will not be final until it is published, likely in the next two months.Ī person familiar with the court’s deliberations said that four of the other Republican-appointed justices – Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – had voted with Alito in the conference held among the justices after hearing oral arguments in December, and that line-up remains unchanged as of this week. Justices can and sometimes do change their votes as draft opinions circulate and major decisions can be subject to multiple drafts and vote-trading, sometimes until just days before a decision is unveiled. “We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” he writes in the document, labeled as the “Opinion of the Court.” “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”ĭeliberations on controversial cases have in the past been fluid. “ Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Alito writes. Casey – that largely maintained the right. The draft opinion is a full-throated, unflinching repudiation of the 1973 decision which guaranteed federal constitutional protections of abortion rights and a subsequent 1992 decision – Planned Parenthood v. Wade decision, according to an initial draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito circulated inside the court and obtained by POLITICO. The Supreme Court has voted to strike down the landmark Roe v.