Dark Money Led To This Moment
Abortion-rights protesters following Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe)
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A secretive donor network built the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority, and brought them the case and arguments to overturn Roe v. Wade.
by Andrew Perez & Aditi Ramaswami
The Supreme Court overturned its landmark Roe v. Wade decision on June 24th, invalidating federal protections for abortion rights. The decision will quickly limit reproductive health care access for tens of millions of people.
The decision, which is part of a barrage of devastating, precedent-setting Supreme Court rulings this term, surely has many Americans wondering how we arrived at such a dark moment. The answer is simple, even if it is rarely discussed in corporate media: It lies in a giant pile of anonymous cash that was deployed to buy Supreme Court seats, help determine justices’ caseload, and shape their decisions.
A secretive, well-financed dark money network has spent years working to build the Supreme Court’s radical conservative supermajority and bankrolling many of the politicians and organizations involved in the most controversial cases now before the court, including the abortion rights case decided Friday.
The public will almost certainly never know the identities of the ultra-wealthy individuals and interests who paid to stack this court and influence its decisions, but much of the credit should go to an an anti-abortion zealot named Leonard Leo and his cadre of conservative activists.
The co-chairman of the Federalist Society, the conservative lawyers group in Washington, Leo is best known for serving as President Donald Trump’s top judicial adviser. Leo helped select Trump’s Supreme Court picks while simultaneously leading a dark money network that boosted their confirmations with TV ads and contributions to conservative groups that promoted the judges.
Leo’s dark money network has also funded Republican state attorneys general and conservative nonprofits that are backing and even directly arguing some of the most contentious cases before the high court right now.
It is with these cases that the Supreme Court has ended federal protections for abortion rights, dismantled the high court precedent requiring police officers to inform people of their rights to remain silent and to an attorney when they’re being detained, struck down blue-state restrictions on carrying concealed firearms, and handed conservative state lawmakers more power to chip away at Americans’ voting rights.
In other upcoming decisions, the court could soon strip environmental regulators of their ability to regulate carbon emissions, and weaken tribal sovereignty.
So to fully understand how we got here, it’s important to follow the money — at least to the extent that we can.
Quietly Building The Court’s Conservative Supermajority
Leo and his allies first formed the Judicial Crisis Network in 2005 to help confirm George W. Bush’s Justices, John Roberts and Samuel Alito — and Leo reportedly played a “decisive role” in both of their selections. The organization has grown quietly and steadily since then, and played a key role in flipping the court and building its 6-3 conservative supermajority.