1. United States
2. Colo.
3. Letter

The Supreme Court's shadow docket has become a tool for advancing partisan policy goals without transparency or accountability. I need you to support legislation that restricts the Court's use of emergency rulings to genuine emergencies and requires full written opinions for any decision that affects public policy. Recent reporting on leaked internal memos confirms what many suspected: the shadow docket transformed from a mechanism for death penalty cases into a policy weapon starting with the 2016 Clean Power Plan ruling. That unsigned, single-paragraph decision struck down Obama's environmental regulation in just two weeks. West Virginia's own solicitor general admitted "This had never been done." Since then, the Court has routinely used this process to bypass lower courts and decide major policy questions without the detailed reasoning Americans deserve. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said it plainly at Yale Law School this week: the Court now "continually touches the third rail of every divisive policy issue" while stripping lower courts of their authority. When the highest court in the land issues unsigned opinions on matters affecting millions of people, it erodes public trust and abandons the transparency that legitimizes judicial power. Congress has the authority to regulate the Court's procedures. Use it. Require transparency, limit emergency powers to actual emergencies, and restore the deliberative process that once defined the Supreme Court.