The New York Times obtained internal Supreme Court memos from 2016 showing that when Chief Justice Roberts blocked Obama's Clean Power Plan, he and conservative justices focused on costs to the coal industry but never discussed the climate or public health benefits of the regulation. The memos reveal Roberts cited worst-case cost estimates while ignoring EPA's lower projections and downplaying the precedent of the Supreme Court blocking a rule before lower courts could rule on it. Coal production has since dropped 43% anyway between 2015 and 2024 without any such regulation, undermining the core argument about irreparable industry harm. The leaked documents show a judicial process that legal experts say was predetermined rather than deliberative on complex technical and economic questions.