The New York Times published leaked internal Supreme Court memos from 2016 on Saturday, revealing the justices' debate leading to a stay on President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan. Chief Justice John Roberts pressed colleagues for swift action in the documents. The memos highlight concerns over the EPA rule's implementation amid lower court proceedings.
The memos, including a 'Memorandum to the Conference' from Roberts' chambers, show his push against the Clean Power Plan, an EPA rule aimed at shifting states' energy generation toward greener technology to combat climate change. Industry groups and Republican-led states challenged the plan, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit denied an emergency stay and scheduled oral arguments. Plaintiffs then sought Supreme Court intervention before that hearing, resulting in a 5-4 stay that halted the rule's enforcement despite compliance deadlines years away—2018 for states and 2022 for fossil fuel companies, as Justice Stephen Breyer noted in his memo. Justice Samuel Alito also weighed in, warning that failing to act could undermine the court's authority and institutional legitimacy, citing EPA comments as treating the rule as irreversible without court intervention. Roberts quoted an EPA administrator's interview expressing confidence in the plan's embedding into the system regardless of Congress, writing: 'I am of the mind that a rule designed to transform a substantial swath of the nation’s economy should be tested by this Court before it is presented as a fait accompli. But it seems that the EPA is sufficiently confident of this rule’s immediate implications that not even the combined efforts of Congress and the President could reverse its effects.' Memos from Justices Elena Kagan, Anthony Kennedy, and Sonia Sotomayor also surfaced, with Kagan previously calling the one-paragraph stay unprecedented. As first reported by Jodi Kantor and Adam Liptak in The New York Times, these documents shed light on the origins of the court's 'shadow docket' practice for emergency rulings.
