THREAD My Thoughts on @politico story saying the Court voted to say Roe v. Wade is fully overruled.

I’ve quickly scanned the draft opinion and it appears legitimate. This means there was a preliminary vote to fully overrule Roe V Wade and that a majority of the Court agreed.

There are lots of signals the opinion is legit. The length and depth of analysis, would be very hard to fake. It says it is written by Alito and definitely sounds like him. It’s 60+ pages long.

If this is a deep fake, it would require a state actor or someone like that. I can’t imagine that.

It’s possible the Court could pull back from this position, but this looks like they voted that way after the oral argument.

This opinion says states can criminalize abortion, with no rape or incest exception. It is exactly the hardline position I’ve been saying the Court is going to impose for the last 3 years. It will set women back in profound ways. Congress must act ASAP. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/06/07/roe-abortion-congress-mississippi/

Here is the draft opinion according to politico https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000180-874f-dd36-a38c-c74f98520000

This is the equivalent of the pentagon papers leak, but at the Supreme Court. I’m pretty sure there has never ever been such a leak. And certainly not in the years I’ve been following the Supreme Court. END

Sorry one last thing for those wondering about Court procedure: After oral argument the Justices take a tentative vote. This would have happened in December. The senior most justice in the majority gets to assign the opinion. That might have been Roberts, but doubtful since...

Alito wrote this draft.
Now, once the draft is circulated, the justices in dissent will write an opinion. That's presumably happening now. But the tenative vote seems strong, and Chief Justice Roberts is irrelevant if the 4 + Alito hold with their tentative votes.

So there is the possibility an opinion can flip after oral argument and the tentative vote, so it's theoretically powerful the Alito opinion won't be the vote of the Court. But it would require a Justice BESIDES Chief Justice Roberts to flip.