NY Times Exposes Confidential SCOTUS 'Shadow Docket' Memos
The Times takes a deep dive into leaked SCOTUS memos related to the origins and implementation of the infamous "shadow docket" rulings.
TLDR; is how John Roberts argued they should stop Obama's attempt to regulate coal-fired power plants.
In public, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has cultivated a reputation for care and caution. The papers reveal a different side of him. At a critical moment for the country and the court, the papers show, he acted as a bulldozer in pushing to stop Mr. Obama’s plan to address the global climate crisis.
When colleagues warned the chief justice that he was proposing an unprecedented move, he was dismissive. “I recognize that the posture of this stay request is not typical,” he wrote. But he argued that the Obama plan, which aimed to regulate coal-fired plants, was “the most expensive regulation ever imposed on the power sector,” and too big, costly and consequential for the court not to act immediately.
Imagine that. A Supreme Court justice said it out loud: Protecting the power industry from the financial consequences of their climate-destroying policies was more important than, you know, the climate.
On Feb. 5, the internal correspondence obtained by The Times shows, the chief justice circulated a blast of a memo, insisting that the court halt the president’s plan.