Escalation of the Supreme Court’s leak probe puts clerks in a ‘no-win’ situation – By Tierney Sneed (CNN) / June 1, 2022
(CNN) In most other pockets of the federal government, a public employee’s decision to lawyer up in the face of an internal investigation would be a no-brainer. But for Supreme Court clerks now being asked to cooperate with new steps in the court’s leak probe, such a move could upend the trajectories of their careers.
Legal experts have said that the disclosure to Politico of a draft Supreme Court opinion ending the right to an abortion is likely not, by itself, a crime. But clerks now are in a precarious position with the move — as reported exclusively by CNN Tuesday — by court officials tasked with leading the investigation to ask that they turn over private phone data and sign affidavits. A clerk may potentially be viewed with suspicion if they hesitate to cooperate or seek outside counsel before participating.
“The clerks are probably the most vulnerable workers who had access to that information in the building, because their career could be dramatically affected by how they chose to respond,” Catherine Fisk, a professor of employment law at UC Berkeley School of Law, told CNN. The basic act of lawyering up could create an inference of guilt “is certainly a fear that they would have.”
