Revealed: Redacted SCOTUS document helped hide 'public scrutiny of the court’s doings'

The U.S. Supreme Court sought to boost protection for its justices in anticipation of overturning the landmark Roe vs. Wade decision that granted abortion access in the United States for some 50 years, according to a new report in The Guardian.

The U.K. publication reported Sunday that it obtained the "heavily redacted" memorandum of agreement (MOA) from March 2022 after it resurfaced on governmentattic.com.

The document "sought to beef up judicial protection" for court justices, "while also reducing public scrutiny of the court’s doings, before the court’s controversial decision to overturn Roe v Wade," wrote investigative journalist Jason Wilson.

The conservative court's landmark 6-3 decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization was made public in June 2022.

Donald Trump repeatedly took credit for the result, after he appointed three conservative justices during his first term in office -- Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.

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The Guardian report continued, "The document shows that the US marshals service and the Supreme Court of the United States Police Department (SCUSPD) agreed to enhance cooperation and intelligence sharing and provide protection for retired judges on request. It also mandated that the cost of USMS’s enhanced cooperation would be paid for by them and the department of justice, rather than being added to the judiciary’s budget.

"Crucially, the MOA mandates that the court would maintain 'exclusive legal custody and control' of all security-related records, even those in USMS possession. That means those records would be explicitly excluded from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requirements, and hidden from public view."

The Guardian quoted Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, a non-profit that focuses on SCOTUS transparency, saying that the MOA made it “sound like SCOTUS is upset that you and I and others keep requesting travel records of the justices via FOIA, and they’re trying to get around sharing them under the law”.

The Freedom of Information Act, passed in 1967, granted the public the right to request access to records from any U.S. federal agency.

The Guardian report concluded that the U.S. Marshals Service and SCOTUS police "may give some consideration to the court’s cases" when they formulate their security plans for the court and its justices.

Read The Guardian report here.