The 2022 leak of the Dobbs draft opinion was already one of the most stunning breaches in Supreme Court history. Now, a new report suggests the fallout inside the marble palace was even more chaotic than the public realized. According to author Mollie Hemingway’s forthcoming book, Justice Elena Kagan became so furious after the leak that she allegedly screamed at then-Justice Stephen Breyer “so loudly” that the “wall was shaking.”
Nothing says calm judicial temperament quite like rattling the drywall.
The leaked draft, first published by Politico in May 2022, revealed that the Supreme Court was poised to overturn Roe v. Wade in a majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito. The disclosure sent Washington into immediate meltdown mode. Protesters descended on the homes of conservative justices, activists launched pressure campaigns, and death threats surged against members of the Court.
Justice Alito later said the leak “made us targets of assassination,” and that was not hyperbole. A man was arrested near Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home after allegedly arriving armed and intending to k*ll him. Yet despite the obvious security danger, the Court still had to finish its work while under siege.
According to Hemingway’s account, Alito urged the liberal justices to speed up completion of their dissents so the final opinion could be released sooner and the dangerous limbo period could end. Justice Breyer, though deeply opposed to overturning Roe, was reportedly the most willing among the liberal bloc to cooperate.
That apparently did not sit well with Kagan.
Elena Kagan is a psychopath. At the very moment conservative justices were at risk of being assassinated following the Dobbs leak (but before its official release), Kagan tried to delay the release of the opinion. Maybe in the hopes one of her colleagues would be murdered and the…
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) April 18, 2026
Hemingway writes that Kagan confronted Breyer behind closed doors, yelling so loudly observers said the wall was shaking. If accurate, it reveals not only anger over Dobbs itself but fractures inside the Court’s liberal wing. Publicly, justices often project institutional unity. Privately, they are human beings with egos, tempers, and very strong opinions.
Kagan, an Obama appointee, has long been considered one of the sharper political minds on the Court. She likely understood that timing mattered, and delaying the opinion may have been seen as buying time for public pressure to build. Critics would call that political maneuvering. Supporters would call it strategy. Washington usually uses different words for the same behavior depending on who benefits.
The Supreme Court’s later internal investigation failed to identify the leaker, despite interviewing 97 staffers who signed sworn affidavits denying responsibility. New security protocols were adopted, but the biggest question remains unanswered. Who did it, and why?
Alito has said he likely knows who was responsible and believes the motive was to stop Roe from being overturned.
Whether that is ever confirmed or not, the leak permanently damaged trust inside the Court. And if this new account is true, it also exposed something else, even among justices who vote together, unity can disappear the moment the doors close.
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