WASHINGTON - June begins, marking the beginning of the Supreme Court’s month-long domination season when the Justice abandoned his decision in its largest and most controversial case.
But this year is different.
President Donald Trump’s second term destroyed the court calendar, and nine judges now spend a lot of time, if not more, emergency cases with juggling consequences, that need to be handled as quickly as regular cases in cases that have been regularly watched and considered for months.
"It highlights the extent to which Donald Trump and the Trump administration suck all oxygen out of the room," said Leah Litman, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School.
She added that this could affect public understanding and understanding of what the courts are doing, in part because media organizations are being used to invest additional resources during June that are not necessarily available during other periods of the year.
It also changes the normal pace of court action. The court announced the expected controversial case in advance and was always issued at 10 a.m., but the emergency decision can drop at any time of the day without advance notice. A recent decision was posted Saturday morning.
Almost all emergency cases are related to the government’s active interpretation of federal law, and executive orders are often blocked by federal judges.
With June beginning, the Supreme Court had 33 cases that could rule 62 cases in the so-called merit cases. These cases are arguments the judge heard during the current nine-month period starting in October and are expected to be decided by issuing lengthy written decisions. The next scheduled ruling day is Thursday.
Meanwhile, since January, the court has released some descriptions through rulings in 11 Trump-related emergency cases called "Shadow Case", and several others are pending. In these cases, the justices usually do not hear oral debates and are usually decided by brief court orders without the lengthy, detailed reasoning associated with the major Supreme Court's major ruling.
but The decision of a shadow case is actually as important as the cases identified in the merit case, which has attracted attention to transparency and process.
In shadow cases, the court has allowed Trump to ban trans people in the military from taking effect, given that Green light fired members of independent agencies and approved the government's dismissal of legal protections for thousands of Venezuelan immigrants.
The judge also tried to use wartime laws to expel Venezuelans and ordered Trump to "promote" the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly sent to El Salvador.
On Friday, the court allowed the Trump administration to revoke legal protections for 500,000 immigrants.
At the same time, compared with previous years, the number of cases issued is relatively small.
Among the undetermined cases, the biggest is the challenge of Tennessee law prohibiting gender transition care for minors. The court will also rule on conservative religious objections to LGBTQ-themed books in a Maryland school and strive to limit access to porn sites.
By contrast, last June, the court's ruling included a broad immunity to events that occurred during Trump's term, an incident in which he served as president, a ruling that weakened federal agencies' powers, a decision that upheld a law that prohibited domestic abusers from possessing firearms, while another rejected the Food and Drug Administration's approval of abortion drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
In the summer of 2023, the court terminated affirmative action for college admissions within a few days and killed President Joe Biden’s student loan debt relief program.
Last summer, the court overturned Roe v. Wade, a ruling on Landmark Abortion Rights.
"The emergency has seemed almost swallowed up the court's merits in the past month or so," said Washington attorney Greg Garre, who argued that he is expected to be one of the largest cases of the semester in Oklahoma's attempt to open the first religious public charter school. But it When the court was in a 4-4 deadlock, it ended up in trouble.
In fact, some cases are eventually converted into favorable cases due to emergency applications, creating a certain perspective of the “Rocket Case”, that is, the main cases are immediately narrowed to the High Court rather than spending months or years navigating the normal appeal process.
"In a few years, we may no longer be able to say that emergency cases are "irregular" procedures. This could become a normal procedure for all high-risk litigation," said William Baude, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School.
A high-profile example is a court's January ruling upholding a law aimed at banning Tiktok if its Chinese owners do not sell it immediately. The Supreme Court resolved the entire case within weeks of reaching the court through an emergency appeal.
The court also chose to try oral debates in three shadow cases, involving a nationwide injunction issued by a judge that prevented Trump’s plan to end his reproductive citizenship, further blurring conventional cases and rapidly developing shadow cases.
Some Supreme Court observers speculate that the justices deliberately kept their merit files in a relatively light situation this semester because they knew there were election-related cases in the fall, and if he won a Trump-related case, it would be possible to win a Trump-related case based on his first term.
"I absolutely feel like the court has reserved space in its plans for emergency cases involving Trump administration initiatives," said John Elwood, another attorney who debated the case in court.