And just like the justices’ decision last year to end federal abortion protections and other troubling Scotus developments this term, the court’s new decisions are all examples of how dark money reigns supreme.
That’s because one person’s fingerprints are all over these developments: the conservative legal activist Leonard Leo, the king of dark money. And based on Biden’s preliminary response to some of these new court rulings, it appears the president isn’t going to do anything to stop him.
As Donald Trump’s judicial adviser, Leo helped build the conservative supermajority on the supreme court that killed Roe v Wade. As the Lever helped expose last year, Leo’s judicial activism was supercharged in 2021 when a conservative surge protector magnate secretly funneled $1.6bn to his new dark money fund – the largest known political advocacy donation in US history.
Leo’s dark money operation has since been working to influence some of the supreme court’s most consequential cases.
That includes the court’s rulings on affirmative action. In 6-3 and 6-2 decisions, the supreme court struck down affirmative action policies at both public and private universities. Both cases were brought by Students for Fair Admissions, which
purports to be a “membership group of more than 20,000 students, parents and others who believe that racial classifications and preferences in college admissions are unfair, unnecessary, and unconstitutional”.
But in truth, the group is funded by Leo’s sprawling network of opaque non-profits that are all trying to roll back protections deemed antithetical to a conservative way of life. In 2020, Students for Fair Admissions
received $250,000, more than a third of its total revenue that year, from the 85 Fund, an organization
steered by Leo.
Several other Leo-backed interests filed supreme court briefs backing Students for Fair Admissions’ fight to overturn affirmative action. That included
Speech First, a non-profit that received $700,000 from 2020 to 2021 from the 85 Fund, as well as 19
Republican attorneys general. Leo’s network has long been the top donor to the Republican Attorneys General Association (Raga), which helps elect Republican attorneys general across the country.
Leo also had a hand in the supreme court’s decision that a Colorado website designer was within her rights to refuse a same-sex wedding project. The decision has the potential to render anti-discrimination protections across the country as
unenforceable.
The court ruled this way even though the designer’s lawyers never actually
argued to the high court that she had ever been asked to do an LGBTQ+ project. The only time they apparently tried to make such a point was with an exhibit that appears to have been a
fake website design request.
Once again, the effort is tied to Leo and his colleagues. At least six conservative groups that filed briefs supporting the Colorado suit have
received millions in dark money contributions from Leo’s network.
Finally, the supreme court struck down Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, a
potentially catastrophic development for tens of millions of Americans struggling under onerous student loans. Leo is connected to this matter, too.
The
case in question was led by two Republican attorneys general and backed by a
brief filed by 17 other Republican attorneys general – all of whom are connected to the Leo-backed Raga. The Foundation for Government Accountability, a conservative thinktank, filed another brief in support of abolishing student loan forgiveness. Between 2019 and 2021, Leo’s network donated
nearly $4m to the foundation and its advocacy arm.
Even the design of the student debt case reeks of Leo’s involvement, since just like the Colorado suit, it appears to have been based on DC machinations. As
the Lever reported, the student loan servicer at the heart of the case – whom Republican attorneys general argued would be harmed by Biden’s student loan plan – would in reality face no financial harm at all.
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