Justice Amy Coney Barret rules her first decision in case against the sierra club

The supreme court ruled in favor of the government against an environmental group that filed a lawsuit for internal studies detailing potential harm to endangered aquatic species in the first major opinion by Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
The Sierra Club sued the Obama Administration in 2015, arguing the Freedom of Information Act. The case marked the first time Barrett took part in oral arguments, days after she instituted the Supreme Court last fall.
President Donald Trump replaced the last associate justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to nominate the former federal appeals court judge and law professor.
In Barrett’s 11-page opinion, approved by six other justices, she wrote that the documents sought by Sierra Club were exempt from federal record disclosure requirements because they were part of the administration’s deliberative process.
“The deliberative process privilege protects the draft biological opinions at issue here because they reflect a preliminary view not a final decision about the likely effect of the EPA’s proposed rule on endangered species,” Barrett wrote.
Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, associated with Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissented, saying they would have sent the case back to lower courts to review whether the documents at issue were drafts or were closer to the final form.
At the time, Barrett wrote that she agreed with the court’s decision to block the prohibition on indoor services but said the record was uncertain about the state’s ban on singing and chanting at indoor services. The position put her slightly to the left of the court’s most conservative justices, who wanted to allow singing to continue.
“if a chorister can sing in a Hollywood studio but not in her church, California regulations cannot be seen as neutral,” Barrett wrote at the time. “But the record is uncertain, and the decisions below, unfortunately, shed little light on the issue.”
She agreed with the opinion of Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh.