Trump reigns supreme in high court emergency docket decisions

Trump Reigns Supreme in High Court Emergency Docket Decisions
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Related Stories Liberal Justices Show Competing Styles in Shadow Docket Dissents Oct. 3, 2025, 8:45 AM UTC Kagan Urges Caution in Supreme Court Use of ‘Shadow Docket’ (1) July 24, 2025, 7:07 PM UTC Kavanaugh, Thomas Raise Concerns Over Shadow Docket Pressure (2) May 10, 2024, 6:16 PM UTC The Shadow Docket and How the Supreme Court Uses It (Video) Nov. 3, 2021, 6:03 PM UTC Search by Topic pro se representation eviction gender identity discrimination vaccines military and defense government employees extradition coronavirus foreign worker employment workplace infectious disease exposure More Topic (2) The Supreme Court is siding overwhelmingly with President Donald Trump when challenges arrive via the emergency docket, a Bloomberg Law analysis found. The conservative-led high court has ruled in Trump’s favor in challenges to his second term policies more than 75% of the time in the last year, when considering matters before they’ve been fully briefed and argued before the justices. Trump has taken an expansive view of executive power during his second term, issuing orders upending immigration enforcement, higher education and the federal workforce. The justices’ interim orders, greenlighting Trump policies for months or longer while cases are fully considered, may prove irreversible for immigrants facing deportation or terminated federal workers—even if the high court eventually rules differently on the merits. “They may describe these decisions as temporary. But for many people, and in some instances for everybody, this is it,” said Carolyn Shapiro, the founder and co-director of Chicago-Kent College of Law’s Institute on the Supreme Court of the United States. “There is no more.” Trump has spent his first year back in office fighting off hundreds of legal challenges to his efforts to reshape executive power, many of which didn’t reach the high court, while railing against so-called “rogue” and “liberal” judges who have ruled against him. The high court’s interim docket orders in those cases, issued during the 12 months following Trump’s second inauguration, tended to favor the administration regardless of the circuit where the case was initially heard, the analysis shows. The justices have given his administration the green light to move forward with firing of certain federal workers, banning transgender people from serving in the military, and rescinding humanitarian immigration protections. Four of the high court’s emergency docket orders in those cases were losses for the administration, while three others were mixed. Those losses included the Supreme Court’s orders preventing the administration from deporting Venezuelan migrants from Texas under a wartime authority, and deploying the National Guard in Illinois. “There is definitely a sense in which this court, being conservative, is agreeing with this administration quite a lot and certainly more than many people, especially on the left, would like,” said Richard Re, a Harvard Law School professor who studies federal courts. WATCH: How the Supreme Court Uses the “Shadow Docket” However, the data can also create an “exaggerated impression of what’s happening,” he said, since the administration’s lawyers are incentivized to ask the high court to weigh in only in cases they think they’ll win. The Supreme Court’s emergency, or interim, docket contains decisions by the justices following emergency requests stemming from ongoing litigation in the lower courts. It is sometimes referred to by critics as the “shadow docket” for its lack of transparency, as the high court’s majority usually doesn’t include their reasoning when handing down those orders. The justices may ultimately rule on a given issue on the merits down the road, and the interim order determines the status quo until then. The docket has grown in recent years, drawing concerns from both liberal and conservative justices that it forces quick decisions without the full briefing that lower courts received. Most high court emergency docket orders in cases challenging Trump administration policies stem from cases filed in appeals courts seen as more liberal. That’s in part due to challengers choosing to file lawsuits in courts they believe will be more favorable to their cause. The US solicitor general’s office can also choose which cases to raise to the Supreme Court. Winning Record Bloomberg Law reviewed 55 emergency docket orders between Trump’s inauguration in January 2025 and January 2026. Twenty-seven were in cases related to the administration, of which the justices issued interim decisions favorable to Trump in 21 orders, or roughly 78%. The analysis doesn’t include death penalty or extradition cases, pro se filings, or state court appeals. The analysis also excludes cases where the justices delayed deciding on a request for relief, such as in challenges to Trump’s efforts to fire Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve and US Copyright Office director Shira Perlmutter. Re argued these delayed applications represent “a form of defeat for the administration,” since they left the lower court rulings against the administration in place. While the orders aren’t always clear on how each justice ruled on the Trump administration’s request, the court’s liberal members have regularly issued dissents, sometimes referencing the apparent acquiescence to the government’s requests. Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor have penned some of the sharpest criticism in those dissenting opinions. William Eskridge, a professor at Yale Law School, said that while the Supreme Court may be less divided along partisan lines for non-political cases, the Trump administration’s legal fights have exposed differences among the justices on ideological grounds. “The cases that people are interested in and publicized, you are going to see that split,” Eskridge said. “And part of it is because the Trump administration is taking not just a partisan position, but a hyper-partisan position.” The Biden administration made far fewer emergency requests to the Supreme Court during its first year. The high court in 2021 and 2022 refused to halt a Texas trial court judge’s order reinstating the “Remain in Mexico” program and blocked an OSHA Covid-19 vaccine mandate. The justices came down on the administration’s side in choosing to not block an expiring eviction moratorium and upholding a Covid-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers at federally funded facilities. Circuit Breakdown During the first year of Trump’s second term, the Supreme Court was more likely to grant requests for relief from lower court rulings in challenges to the administration’s policies than it was in cases unrelated to the administration. The justices granted requests for relief, at least partially, in 24 out of its 27 Trump-related orders. Most were wins or mixed rulings favoring Trump. But the high court let the underlying court rulings stand in all but three of the 28 orders unrelated to the administration that reached the emergency docket. The federal appeals court that saw its decisions lifted most often by the justices when they reached the emergency docket, including Trump and non-Trump cases, was the Boston-based US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, the data shows. The justices granted requests for relief from lower court rulings in nearly 90% of the court’s emergency docket orders in the past year that originated from within that circuit, which covers trial courts in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Puerto Rico, the analysis shows. Next are the US Courts of Appeals for the DC Circuit and the Ninth Circuit, which each saw roughly 70% of emergency docket orders lifting rulings that stemmed from their courts. The high court granted relief in about 57% of its orders in cases out of the Richmond-based US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, according to the analysis. The grant rates may be explained by the high volume of Trump administration challenges filed in those courts, legal scholars said. The First Circuit, for example, had two non-Trump cases reach the interim docket this past year, and the Supreme Court granted relief in one of them. The Supreme Court considered on its interim docket just one non-Trump related case out of the DC Circuit, and it let the lower court ruling stand. The First Circuit has emerged as a magnet for lawsuits contesting executive actions, despite having the smallest bench of the circuits. All of its six active circuit judges were Democratic appointees until November 2025, when Trump appointee Joshua Dunlap was confirmed. The justices issued emergency docket decisions in nine cases originating from the First Circuit, the second most represented circuit at the interim docket nationally. The court with the most cases decided on the high court was the San Francisco-based Ninth Circuit, the nation’s largest appeals court, with 10 orders. The DC Circuit, sometimes the mandated forum for challenges to federal government actions, is also considered a more liberal court. Seven of its active members are Democratic appointees, compared to four Republican appointees, three of whom were nominated by Trump. The DC Circuit’s Trump appointees have often lined up with the Supreme Court’s conservative members in saying they would allow the administration’s policies to move forward. There were four DC Circuit cases on administration actions that had Trump appointees on the panel and were taken up to the high court. In each of those cases, those conservative appellate judges said they would rule in the government’s favor. Methodology Bloomberg Law’s analysis includes interim docket orders issued from Jan. 20, 2025, through Jan. 20, 2026. It doesn’t include death penalty cases, extradition cases, pro se filings, or appeals from state court. Orders were gathered from the Supreme Court’s website and email notifications. Orders in cases classified as administration challenges are those contesting actions by the current administration. They do not include individual challenges against the federal government that are unrelated to administration actions, such as criminal or individual deportation cases. The analysis includes final orders on emergency relief requests, and it doesn’t include deferred decisions or short-term administrative stay orders. Learn more about Bloomberg Law or Log In to keep reading: See Breaking News in Context Bloomberg Law provides trusted coverage of current events enhanced with legal analysis. Learn more Already a subscriber? Log in to keep reading or access research tools and resources. Log In © 2026 Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc. 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