How Many Supreme Court Justices Must Deny NPR’s Reporting Before Media Outlets Believe Them?

NPR’s legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg made that claim in a bombshell report earlier this week. She wrote:

According to court sources, Sotomayor did not feel safe in close proximity to people who were unmasked. Chief Justice John Roberts, understanding that, in some form asked the other justices to mask up.

They all did. Except Gorsuch, who, as it happens, sits next to Sotomayor on the bench. His continued refusal since then has also meant that Sotomayor has not attended the justices’ weekly conference in person, joining instead by telephone.

This revelation prompted widespread denunciation of Gorsuch, who has authored a book called A Republic, If You Can Keep It that laments the loss of civility in public discourse and in politics.

How could a man who decries that political actors no longer treat each other with basic decency refuse to wear a mask for the immunocompromised colleague who sits next to him? Obviously, that would be hypocritical.

But here’s the problem: NPR’s reporting is now being challenged.

First, Fox News’ Shannon Bream did some digging of her own, and her SCOTUS sources said the report was untrue Gorsuch did not refuse a request to mask up.

Dueling news stories one from the progressive mainstream, another from a right-leaning outlet are hard to adjudicate. But the Supreme Court made it easier for us. Yesterday, Gorsuch and Sotomayor released a joint statement putting the rumor to bed:

“Reporting that Justice Sotomayor asked Justice Gorsuch to wear a mask surprised us. It is false. While we may sometimes disagree about the law, we are warm colleagues and friends.”

Did that dispel the story? Not quite. Progressive activist Charlotte Clymer called it a dodge, because technically NPR had reported that Roberts, acting on behalf of Sotomayor, asked Gorsuch to mask up, not Sotomayor. I guess we’ll never know for sure&but wait! The chief justice released a statement as well. In it, he unequivocally states that he did not ask Gorsuch to wear a mask.

via reason.com