The major Supreme Court shadow docket cases are the emergency orders through which the justices have, over the past decade, decided questions about abortion access, pandemic mandates, immigration enforcement, redistricting, executions, and environmental regulation without full briefing or argument. The shadow docket covers every order and summary decision the Court issues outside its merits cases, and because these rulings arrive on compressed timelines with little or no written reasoning, their effect on national policy often outpaces the Court’s regular opinions.
How Emergency Stays Work
Most shadow docket activity involves one party asking the Court to pause a lower court ruling during appeal, or to lift a pause the lower court imposed. The Court evaluates these applications under the four-factor test from Nken v. Holder (2009): likelihood of success on the merits, irreparable harm to the applicant, injury to the opposing party, and the public interest.1Cornell Law Institute. Nken v. Holder In practice the factors leave the justices wide discretion, and many orders come down with nothing more than “the application for stay is granted.”
Abortion and Reproductive Health
Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson (2021)
Texas Senate Bill 8 banned abortions after detection of a fetal heartbeat, roughly six weeks of pregnancy, and bypassed state enforcement by allowing private citizens to sue anyone who performed or assisted an abortion for at least $10,000 per procedure. Providers sought an emergency order before the law took effect. A five-justice majority denied relief in an unsigned order that emphasized the unusual private enforcement structure, stressing the ruling was “not based on any conclusion about the constitutionality of Texas’s law.”2Congress.gov. Texas Heartbeat Act SB 8 Litigation Supreme Court Identifies Narrow Path for Challenges to Texas Abortion Law The law took hold across Texas while litigation continued for months.
Moyle v. United States (2024)
Idaho’s near-total abortion ban collided with the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which requires hospital emergency rooms to provide stabilizing treatment to any patient in a medical emergency.3Congress.gov. EMTALA Emergency Abortion Care Litigation Overview and Initial Analysis A federal district court enjoined Idaho from prosecuting doctors who performed emergency abortions required by EMTALA. In January 2024 the Court stayed that injunction, letting Idaho’s ban operate without the EMTALA exception while it considered the case. In June the Court dismissed the case as improvidently granted, dissolving the stay and restoring the injunction.4Supreme Court of the United States. Moyle v. United States For the months in between, Idaho emergency rooms operated under the stricter state rule.
FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine (2023–2024)
A federal district court in Texas ordered the FDA’s approval of mifepristone pulled from the market entirely, which would have cut off medication abortion nationwide. The Court stayed that ruling in full while appeals proceeded.5Supreme Court of the United States. Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine The stay preserved access for over a year. When the Court finally reached the merits in June 2024, it ruled unanimously that the challengers lacked standing to sue.
COVID-19 Public Health Mandates
NFIB v. OSHA (2022)
OSHA’s emergency rule required employers with 100 or more workers to ensure employees were vaccinated against COVID-19 or tested weekly and masked, covering roughly 84 million workers. The Court stayed the mandate in a per curiam opinion, finding OSHA’s workplace-hazard authority did not reach a broad public health risk that was “no more an occupational hazard” than crime or pollution.6Supreme Court of the United States. National Federation of Independent Business v. Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration OSHA withdrew the rule soon after.
Biden v. Missouri (2022)
On the same day, the Court reached the opposite result for a vaccine mandate on healthcare workers at Medicare- and Medicaid-funded facilities. The Secretary of Health and Human Services had specific statutory authority to impose conditions “necessary in the interest of the health and safety” of patients, and the staff vaccination requirement fit within that power.7Supreme Court of the United States. Biden v. Missouri The paired orders drew a line between narrow, agency-specific mandates and broad economy-wide ones.
Austin v. U.S. Navy SEALs 1–26 (2022)
After a district court barred the Navy from acting against service members who refused the COVID-19 vaccine on religious grounds, the government sought emergency relief. The Court granted a partial stay, letting the Navy weigh vaccination status in deployment and assignment decisions even though it could not discipline the service members outright.8United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. US Navy SEALs 1-26 v. Biden Congress later directed the military to rescind the mandate.
Alabama Association of Realtors v. HHS (2021)
The CDC’s eviction moratorium barred nonpayment evictions across most of the country. A district court held the moratorium unlawful but stayed its own judgment during appeal. The Supreme Court vacated that stay in a per curiam opinion, concluding the CDC lacked statutory authority for so sweeping a regulation of the national housing market.9Supreme Court of the United States. Alabama Association of Realtors v. Department of Health and Human Services The moratorium ended immediately.
Religious Exercise During the Pandemic
Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo (2020)
New York capped attendance at houses of worship at 10 people in “red zones” and 25 in “orange zones,” while leaving many secular businesses classified as essential, including acupuncture facilities, garages, and campgrounds, with no comparable limits. On the night before Thanksgiving, a 5–4 majority granted emergency injunctive relief.10Justia. Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo The restrictions were not neutral toward religion because they singled out houses of worship for “especially harsh treatment,” and they failed strict scrutiny for want of narrow tailoring.11Supreme Court of the United States. Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo
Tandon v. Newsom (2021)
The Court applied the same reasoning to California’s limit of three households at in-home religious gatherings, which had no equivalent cap on comparable commercial activity. The order enjoined enforcement as applied to at-home religious exercise and set a framework lower courts used throughout the pandemic: government cannot treat religious activity worse than comparable secular conduct.
Immigration and Border Enforcement
Trump v. Hawaii — Travel Ban Stays (2017)
Before the travel ban reached a merits decision, the emergency docket set its scope. After district courts enjoined executive orders restricting entry from several majority-Muslim countries, the Court stayed the injunctions, allowing the suspension to take effect for foreign nationals who lacked a “credible claim of a bona fide relationship” with a person or entity in the United States. When a revised proclamation drew fresh injunctions, the Court stayed those in full pending appeal.12Supreme Court of the United States. Trump v. Hawaii
Trump v. Sierra Club — Border Wall Funding (2019)
After Congress declined to fund wall construction, the administration redirected military construction money. A district court permanently enjoined the spending and the Ninth Circuit partially stayed that injunction. The Supreme Court stayed the injunction in full, finding the government had made “a sufficient showing” that the challengers lacked a valid cause of action.13Supreme Court of the United States. Trump v. Sierra Club Construction proceeded.
Arizona v. Mayorkas — Title 42 (2022)
After a district court struck down the Title 42 policy that let the government rapidly expel migrants at the southern border, Republican-led states intervened to preserve it. The Court stayed the district court order and treated the application as a petition for certiorari, keeping Title 42 in place for months past the administration’s planned end date.14Supreme Court of the United States. Arizona v. Mayorkas The case was later dismissed as moot once Congress ended the COVID-19 national emergency in 2023.
Biden v. Texas — Remain in Mexico (2021–2022)
When the Biden administration moved to end the Migrant Protection Protocols, which required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for U.S. court hearings, a Texas federal judge ordered the policy reinstated. The Fifth Circuit and the Supreme Court both declined to stay that order, requiring the government to revive a program it opposed during the litigation.
Temporary Protected Status and Enforcement Stops (2025)
In 2025 the Court granted stays allowing the Trump administration to terminate Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelan nationals, over dissents from Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson. It also stayed a district court order that had restricted immigration officers in southern California counties from relying on factors like apparent race, Spanish-language use, or specific job types to justify stops.
Elections and Redistricting
Merrill v. Milligan (2022)
A three-judge panel unanimously found that Alabama’s congressional map likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by packing Black voters into a single district when their numbers could support two majority-Black districts, and ordered a redraw.15Congress.gov. Allen v. Milligan Supreme Court Holds That Alabama Redistricting Map Likely Violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act The Supreme Court stayed the order so the 2022 elections ran under the existing map. In Allen v. Milligan (2023) the Court confirmed on the merits that the map had indeed violated the Act. An entire election cycle had already run under maps found unlawful.
Ardoin v. Robinson (2022)
Louisiana produced a near-identical dispute. A federal court held the state’s map likely violated Section 2 and ordered an additional majority-Black district. The Supreme Court stayed the injunction and held the case pending the Alabama decision, and Louisiana held its elections under the challenged map.
The Purcell Principle
Both redistricting stays leaned on the Purcell principle, drawn from Purcell v. Gonzalez (2006), which counsels against changing election rules in the period before an election to avoid confusing voters and disrupting administration. The doctrine has no fixed threshold for what counts as too close, which leaves the Court substantial room to apply it.
Capital Punishment
The emergency docket’s oldest function is ruling on last-minute execution applications. Challenges typically target lethal injection protocols, newly surfaced evidence, or intellectual disability under the Eighth Amendment, and orders usually run a sentence or two.
The Federal Execution Cases (2020–2021)
After nearly two decades without a federal execution, the government resumed them in 2020. Lower courts issued repeated stays on constitutional and statutory grounds, and the Supreme Court repeatedly vacated them, sometimes overnight. The Court vacated a district court injunction and let Daniel Lee’s execution proceed. Wesley Purkey’s followed a similar path, with the government skipping the court of appeals and the Supreme Court vacating the injunction without comment. In January 2021, the Court vacated a stay in United States v. Higgs with a one-line order. Justice Sotomayor dissented that the Court was making “weighty decisions in response to emergency applications, with little opportunity for proper briefing and consideration, often in just a few short days or even hours.”16Supreme Court of the United States. United States v. Higgs
Environmental Regulation
West Virginia v. EPA — Clean Power Plan Stay (2016)
In February 2016 the Court stayed the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, which regulated carbon emissions from existing power plants, before any court of appeals had ruled on it. The 5–4 stay drew dissents from Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan. The regulation never took effect, and when the Court reached the merits in 2022 it ruled that the EPA had exceeded its authority under the major questions doctrine.
Ohio v. EPA — Good Neighbor Plan (2024)
The EPA’s Good Neighbor plan required upwind states to reduce ozone pollution that drifts across state lines from power plants and industrial sources. The Court stayed enforcement in June 2024 while the D.C. Circuit reviewed the rule.17Supreme Court of the United States. Ohio et al. v. Environmental Protection Agency et al. The stay technically applied only to the parties who sought it, but the EPA concluded that partial enforcement was impracticable and administratively stayed the plan in all 23 states originally covered.18U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Fact Sheet Interim Final Rule Responding to Stay Order for Good Neighbor Plan
EPA Power Plant Emissions Rule (2024)
Not every application succeeds. When states and industry groups asked the Court to block the EPA’s 2024 rule on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, the Court denied the stay and let the rule remain in effect during litigation.
Executive Power Disputes in 2025
The emergency docket has become a primary venue for conflicts between the executive branch and the lower courts. In 2025, beyond the immigration orders above, the Court stayed a district court ruling that would have required the State Department to issue passports reflecting the preferred sex designation of transgender and nonbinary applicants. It denied a stay that would have allowed the administration to federalize and deploy the National Guard within Illinois. And it stayed a district court order requiring the administration to make billions in foreign aid funds available for obligation. Each order resolved a significant policy fight on a short timeline, with minimal written explanation and immediate nationwide effect.