Whoopi Goldberg suggests suing Supreme Court after release of secret recordings of Justice Alito
"I don't know why you can't pull a class action suit that says, listen, you are no longer doing the job you're supposed to be doing," Goldberg said on "The View."
From Sister Act to class action, Whoopi Goldberg has her sights set on major legal moves amid a recent scandal involving Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann.
The Oscar-winning actress turned up the heat Tuesday at The View's Hot Topics table as the panelists reacted to documentarian Lauren Windsor's secretly recorded (and subsequently released, unverified) audio that reportedly sees her posing as a religious conservative before getting Alito to agree with her assessment that America needs to "return to a place of Godliness" amid political division.
"Somebody needs to expose them," cohost Joy Behar said, which prompted Goldberg to pose the idea: "Why can't we sue them in a class action suit?"
"I'm not sure you can even do that, they're the highest court," Behar responded, while legal expert Sunny Hostin added, "I don't think you can" as Goldberg continued speaking on the recordings — which also included Martha-Ann allegedly expressing disdain for a public display of the LGBTQIA+ Pride flag.
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"I don't know why you can't pull a class action suit that says, listen, you are no longer doing the job you're supposed to be doing," Goldberg said. "I don't understand why we can't do that."
Under judicial immunity, Supreme Court Justices are protected from being sued as individuals over their decisions, though not all personal conduct is fully protected by law.
Later on The View, Hostin said that she was "extremely disappointed" by what Alito allegedly said in Windsor's recordings, but that she's also "not comfortable with snippets of tape recordings without consent being taken out of context."
She noted that, in Washington, D.C., where the recordings reportedly occurred, there is only a one-party consent law that stipulates only one person in the scenario needs to consent to the recording of a private conversation, but she still didn't like the intrusive nature of Windsor's actions.
"My problem is, this happens to us at the table all the time. We have a full on conversation, someone takes a clip of what we say, they blow it out of proportion," Hostin said, later calling it a "hit job" on Windsor's part.
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"But I will say this: In my lifetime, as an attorney, I never knew the religion of the Supreme Court Justices. I never knew the political affiliations of the Supreme Court Justices," she observed. "They are supposed to be the highest court of the land, and really in the world. The world looks to the Supreme Court. This kind of thing compromises the Supreme Court."
Before The View went to a commercial, Hostin noted that Alito did not respond to the show's request for a statement on the recordings. Representatives for the Supreme Court also did not immediately respond to Entertainment Weekly's request for comment.
In recent years, The View cohosts have criticized the Supreme Court, particularly after the June 2022 overturning of the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion ruling as well as Donald Trump appointing conservative figure Amy Coney Barrett to the court in 2020.
The View airs weekdays at 11 a.m. ET on ABC.
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