Sotomayor believes court will hear a case involving WikiLeaks

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor predicted Thursday that a case involving WikiLeaks would likely come before the court.

The matter arose during an event at the University of Denver in which a student asked her a question about the recent document leaks and the national security and free-speech imperatives at stake. 

Sotomayor declined to answer the student because “that question is very likely to come before me.”

She said that the WikiLeaks “incident,” in which the group posted thousands of classified Afghanistan war documents online, “and others are going to provoke legislation that’s already being discussed in Congress, and so some of it is going to come up before [the Supreme Court.]”

The Pentagon has blasted WikiLeaks for what it said was a “breach” of national security. The group has also faced criticism from humanitarian groups that say the leak endangered the Afghan informants mentioned in the documents.

The group’s founder, Julian Assange, said his staff is now working to redact names from a set of documents pending release.