January 15, 2026 For months, the U.S. Supreme Court poured extraordinary effort into finding the source of the leaked draft opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade. Its efforts included mobilising its marshal, pulling in outside investigators and forcing staff to sign affidavits. Now, the court is confronting how its own digital front door was left open for weeks without detection.
According to court filings, Nicholas Moore of Springfield, Tennessee, is expected to plead guilty to hacking the electronic filing system used by the Supreme Court 25 times over a period of two months. The charge is brought under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), the federal government’s primary statute for computer-related crimes.
The filing itself is light on technical detail. Prosecutors declined to clarify whether Moore exploited a vulnerability or simply accessed systems that lacked adequate safeguards. Asked for more information, the government told TechCrunch it “cannot provide any more information that hasn’t already been made public.”
However, the scope is clear. Moore allegedly accessed the filing system dozens of times without detection. That system does not house internal court deliberations or justices’ communications, but it can contain sealed filings, a category of documents that courts treat as highly sensitive.
The case has drawn attention in part because of what it contrasts with. When a draft of the Dobbs decision leaked in 2022, the court launched an aggressive internal investigation, requiring affidavits from staff and deploying the U.S. Marshal’s office. That probe ultimately ended without identifying a leaker. By comparison, Moore’s alleged access went unnoticed for weeks.
The prosecution lands awkwardly for the federal judiciary, which has spent years insisting its technology infrastructure justified high fees and extensive budgets. In 2025, officials acknowledged that Russian state-backed hackers had compromised parts of the broader federal court filing system, prompting renewed promises to strengthen defences. The Moore case suggests those efforts may still be uneven.
The contrast with the court’s response to the Dobbs leak is striking. That investigation fixated on internal betrayal while steering clear of interviewing the justices themselves. This time, the vulnerability appears to have been external and unnoticed despite repeated access over weeks.
