Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) announced his committee is looking into “serious allegations” in a New York Times report Saturday that a 2014 Supreme Court decision was leaked to a former anti-abortion activist. weeks before. The latest: Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), who chairs the judiciary subcommittees, wrote to Supreme Court Justice John Roberts to ask if any action had been taken on with the alleged 2014 leak and suggested they investigate if not, Politico first reported Sunday night. Photo: Senate Judiciary Committee/Twitter

“If the Court, as your letter suggests, is unwilling to undertake investigative inquiries into potential ethics violations that leaves Congress as the only forum,” they wrote, referring to earlier correspondence with Roberts about reports that a religious group allegedly he had tried to influence justice.

Driving the news: Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the majority opinions in the 2014 Hobby Lobby contraception and religious freedom case and the leaked draft opinion on the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, said any suggestion that he or his wife disclosed that the 2014 decision early to anyone was “fake”.

Former anti-abortion leader the Rev. Rob Schenck told the NYT that Gayle Wright, a donor to the evangelical organization he then ran, informed him of the decision. However, Wright “denied receiving or passing on any such information,” the NYT reports.

What they’re saying: Whitehouse and Johnson (D-Ga.) joined Durbin in urging their congressional colleagues to pass legislation requiring an ethics code for Supreme Court justices, the AP reported Sunday night.

In a statement, lawmakers called the NYT report “another black mark on the Supreme Court’s increasingly tarnished moral record” and vowed to “get to the bottom of these serious allegations,” according to the AP.

Read Senator Whitehouse and Congressman Johnson’s letter to Chief Justice Roberts, obtained by Politico via DocumentCloud: Editor’s note: This article has been updated with details of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Rep. Hank Johnson’s letter to Chief Justice John Roberts.