Trove of documents shed rare light on Supreme Court's secretive affair with poison [View all]

Source: msn/Alternet

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The conservative U.S. Supreme Court increasingly relies on the secretive shadow docket to derail clean air standards and remove guardrails on a Trump White House, but the New York Times managed to nab confidential correspondence from 2016 that provides insight on the furtive court’s effort to dismantle an EPA crackdown on poisonous airborne mercury.

“Over five days in the winter of 2016, the justices of the Supreme Court exchanged an extraordinary series of confidential memos about how the court should address an ambitious climate change initiative from President Barack Obama. The debate yielded an order halting the program by a 5-to-4 vote — without any explanation,” reports the Times.

“Legal scholars have called the episode the birth of the modern shadow docket, in which the court has used truncated procedures cloaked in secrecy to block or allow major presidential initiatives in terse rulings.” The Times reports these confidential papers are normally not disclosed until after a judge’s death, meaning the “public might not learn what happened, and why, for decades” after a decision.

In an effort to unravel new clean air standards by the Obama administration, the communications reveal Chief Justice John Roberts sought to invoke the “major questions doctrine” to block federal regulations seeking to shut down dirty coal plants in favor of newer, cleaner energy tech. His argument was that agencies can’t make decisions of vast “economic and political significance” if Congress explicitly grants them that power. The Times notes that the conservative court has increasingly relied upon that argument to discourage energy evolution and cleaner air standards.

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