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.
His arguments were forceful, quick, and filled with confident predictions. The court was going to give the case a full hearing eventually, he forecast. At that point, the justices would vote to overturn the Obama plan, he said, because it went beyond the boundaries of the Clean Air Act.
For now, the chief justice contended that the court had to act immediately because the energy industry “must make changes to business plans today.”
“Absent a stay, the Clean Power Plan will cause (and is causing) substantial and irreversible reordering of the domestic power sector before this court has an opportunity to review its legality,” he wrote.
And so on. You don't have to read this entire piece to know what John Roberts has never been sympathetic to the powerless (I'll just insert my favorite John Roberts wisdom here: "Never trust a grown man who wears red plaid pants") but he used to at least make a gesture in their direction, I suppose to give the impression that he was careful and rational.
He's not.
