Courthouse News Service
Senate GOP taking another crack at bill to criminalize SCOTUS leakers
First unveiled after a draft of the Supreme Court's 2022 abortion ruling leaked to the press, the proposed legislation would impose a $10,000 fine and 10-year prison sentence on anyone who shares confidential information from the high court.
Benjamin S. Weiss
WASHINGTON (CN) — A group of Senate Republicans are trying their hand once again at a bill that would establish steep legal penalties for people who leak internal documents, communications or other confidential information from the U.S. Supreme Court.
The measure, which lawmakers first tried to pass in 2022 and reintroduced on Thursday, comes as President Donald Trump's administration vows to crack down on leaks across the federal government and punish those who provide privileged information to the media.
And the Stop Supreme Court Leakers Act, sponsored by Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, aims to follow through on the administration’s pledges by making it a federal crime to divulge the confidential details of high court deliberations or other activity.
“Supreme Court leaks should be a criminal offense,” Cassidy said in a statement announcing the measure. “Leakers threaten the safety of justices, damage the Court’s reputation, and put lives at risk. They must be held accountable, not celebrated.”
If made law, the proposed legislation would amend U.S. criminal code to add a new offense known as “obstruction of Supreme Court deliberations.” This change would criminalize leaks of confidential information from the court, such as internal notes on cases and communications between the justices and their employees, as well as the justices’ personal information that is not publicly available.
The bill would also make it a crime to prematurely divulge draft or final opinions from the Supreme Court.
Violators would face a 10-year prison sentence and a fine of $10,000. People found guilty of leaking the court’s “internal notes,” however, would be fined but avoid prison time. Cassidy’s bill would also require the seizure of any profits related to leaks from the Supreme Court, which his office said could include book deals or contracts with cable television networks.
“Enough is enough,” the Louisiana Republican wrote in a Thursday post on X, formerly Twitter. “If you leak confidential info from the Supreme Court, you belong in prison — not on CNN.”
Cassidy is sponsoring his proposed legislation alongside Mississippi Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith and Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn.
In a statement, Blackburn called the bill a “vital piece of legislation” that would hold accountable people who aim to undermine the Supreme Court’s legitimacy. And Hyde-Smith concurred, framing the bill as a step toward reforming public trust in the justices.
“Supreme Court justices must be able to carry out their responsibilities without the threat of their every action being leaked, whether to influence, embarrass or threaten them,” said the Mississippi senator.
Cassidy first attempted to punish high court leakers in 2022, after Politico published a leaked draft of the majority opinion in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which gutted the constitutional right to abortion.
The Louisiana Republican said at the time that sharing the draft Dobbs opinion — which came months before the Supreme Court’s final ruling — was an attempt to “publicly intimidate justices” and to undermine the high court’s integrity. And the leak, he added, put “lives at risk.”
The court in 2022 conducted an internal investigation to find the source of the Dobbs leak, but did not unearth enough evidence to name a culprit. Though investigators probed dozens of court staff who had access to the draft opinion, they never interviewed the nine justices under oath.
Meanwhile, as Senate Republicans spin up their latest crusade against Supreme Court leaks, the Trump administration has signaled its own intention to plug holes across the federal government.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week told Pentagon staffers that they could be required to take polygraph tests as the agency works to find the source of what he called “recent unauthorized disclosures.” The Homeland Security Department and Justice Department both have separately said that they would conduct their own internal investigations into leaks about deportation operations.
Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, said in a post on X earlier this month that the intelligence community knew of and was “aggressively pursuing” leakers.
“Politically motivated leaks undermine our national security and the trust of the American people, and will not be tolerated,” she wrote.
But even as the White House looks to punish leakers, it continues to grapple with a similar breach of its own making.
The Trump administration this week came under fire after The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg revealed that White House national security advisor Michael Waltz had mistakenly added him to a group chat on encrypted messaging platform Signal — on which top officials discussed plans for this month’s strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen.
The Signal fiasco has erupted into yet another controversy about the Trump administration’s handling of potentially classified information, with Democratic lawmakers demanding that the White House explain its use of the commercially available messaging app that they argue is vulnerable to breach by foreign actors.
The administration, for its part, has maintained that no classified information was divulged in the Signal group that included Hegseth, Waltz and Gabbard, as well as Vice President JD Vance.