The king of dark money effectively controls the US supreme court now
Once again, the US supreme court has issued rulings triggering national uproar. This time, the court has ruled that universities’ race-conscious admission policies are unconstitutional, that businesses can deny services to LGBTQ+ customers, and that Joe Biden can’t move forward with his student loan forgiveness plan. 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.
Biden acknowledged the judicial racket as the recent supreme court rulings began coming down, telling reporters on Thursday that this court has “done more to unravel basic rights and basic decisions than any court in recent history”.
But at the same time, he refused to do anything of consequence to fix the problem, such as adding justices to the court, which conservatives control 6-3.
“I think if we start the process of trying to expand the court, we’re going to politicize it maybe forever in a way that is not healthy,” Biden said on MSNBC.
Leo, meanwhile, isn’t just using his millions to put key cases and supporting arguments in front of the supreme court. He’s also working behind the scenes, connecting justices like Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito with conservative tycoons happy to ply these figures with luxury trips and other cushy benefits. As the Nation recently noted, Leo is the “matchmaker” who “makes it his job to keep rightwing judges, donors and political actors in alignment.”
Leo isn’t just doing this so he can spend long weekends with his archconservative buddies. As the Lever noted in May, this entire system is designed to stymie a historical trend of Republican justices getting more liberal as they get older:
To be clear, Leo’s system isn’t fully foolproof. His billion-dollar supreme court remote control doesn’t always work as planned.
In recent weeks, the court issued surprise rulings upholding the Voting Rights Act. Conservative justices joined with their liberal colleagues to reject a fringe legal theory that would have given state lawmakers free rein to pass voter suppression laws without oversight from state courts.
Last year, the non-partisan watchdog group Accountable.US found that Leo-backed organizations and other dark money groups had spent nearly $90m in support of the case. That’s a $90m project that can now be considered a failure.
For the most part, though, Leo’s dark money network has notched hugely consequential – and destructive – wins. The king of dark money now has nearly full control of the high court. Will anyone stop him?
The article was co-published with the Lever, a reader-supported investigative news outlet
Joel Warner is the managing editor at the Lever