Leaked internal Supreme Court memos from 2016 reveal that Chief Justice John Roberts urged the court to block former President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan, while liberal justices pushed back against what they called a departure from longstanding practice.

The documents, obtained by the New York Times and published on Friday, show the justices debating whether to use the emergency docket — sometimes called the "shadow docket" — to halt Obama's signature climate initiative before lower courts had fully weighed in.

The memos trace the internal debate from the end of January 2016 to Feb. 9, 2016, when the court issued a 5-4 decision temporarily blocking the Clean Power Plan along ideological lines.

What the Right Is Saying

Conservative legal scholars and Republican-aligned groups have defended the 2016 decision as a proper exercise of judicial review, arguing that the court had an obligation to prevent irreversible harm to the power sector.

In his memo, Chief Justice Roberts wrote that without Supreme Court intervention, "both the states and private industry will suffer irreparable harm from a rule that is — in my view — highly unlikely to survive."

Justice Samuel Alito, also a George W. Bush appointee, agreed with Roberts, writing that "a failure to stay this rule threatens to render our ability to provide meaningful judicial review — and by extension, our institutional legitimacy — a nullity."

The Obama White House initially dismissed the ruling as a minor hurdle, but administration officials behind closed doors were "astonished" that the court had intervened so quickly, according to the New York Times.

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley criticized the leak of the memos in an op-ed, writing that it was "clearly designed to wound some of its members" and noted the court is "looking increasingly porous and partisan in these leaks."

What the Left Is Saying

Progressive legal scholars and Democratic-aligned organizations have long criticized the 2016 decision as an unprecedented use of the emergency docket that undermined presidential authority.

Justice Elena Kagan, an Obama appointee, expressed concern in her memo about the "unique nature of the relief sought" and warned that granting the emergency request would break from established practice.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, an appointee of President Joe Biden, has recently emerged as a vocal critic of the emergency docket. In a Yale Law School speech last week, Jackson called emergency docket decisions "rushed" and "scratch-paper musings" that undermine the court's purpose.

"Given the real world facts that a stay request asks the court to consider, the court's stay decisions can, at times, come across utterly irrational," Jackson said.

Legal experts cited by the New York Times described the Clean Power Plan decision as one of the first examples of the Supreme Court using the emergency docket to limit executive power over national policy.

What the Numbers Show

The Supreme Court blocked Obama's Clean Power Plan by a 5-4 vote along ideological lines on Feb. 9, 2016.

The Clean Power Plan aimed to cut carbon emissions from coal, oil and gas plants by 32% below 2005 levels by 2030.

The emergency docket, sometimes called the "shadow docket," has been used with increasing frequency in recent years. During President Donald Trump's second term, emergency cases have often split 6-3 in favor of the Trump administration.

This was not the first leak of confidential Supreme Court material — the Dobbs opinion leak in 2022 was also an unprecedented breach of court confidentiality.

The Bottom Line

The leaked memos provide a rare window into the Supreme Court's internal deliberations and reveal the ideological tensions that have defined its recent history.

The 2016 decision effectively dealt a death blow to the Clean Power Plan because Democrats lost the White House later that year, and the Trump administration ultimately repealed the regulation.

The memos also highlight ongoing tensions between the court's conservative and liberal wings, with Justice Jackson's recent criticisms reflecting broader debates about the appropriate use of the emergency docket.

Legal experts say the 2016 decision set a precedent for using the emergency docket to limit executive power, a practice that has accelerated during Trump's second term.

The Supreme Court has not yet responded publicly to the latest leak.