The New York Times obtained and published 16 confidential pages of internal Supreme Court memos from February 2016 showing how Chief Justice Roberts voted to halt President Obama's Clean Power Plan climate rule. The memos reveal the early deliberations behind the shadow docket — the secretive fast-track process the Court has since used repeatedly for major decisions on presidential power and constitutional questions. This is significant because internal Supreme Court deliberations are normally sealed for decades, and these documents show how a partisan 5-4 decision with minimal explanation launched what scholars now view as a transformative shift in how the Court operates. The full document set shows Roberts' legal reasoning that the EPA had overreached under the Clean Air Act and that four justices would likely vote to hear the case.