President Donald Trump is racking up victories at the U.S. Supreme Court, as a series of emergency docket rulings from the conservative-majority bench increasingly clear the way for his administration to advance its aggressive second-term agenda, The Hill reported.
In just six months, Trump's administration has filed 21 emergency applications with the Supreme Court — surpassing the total filed by former President Joe Biden during his entire four-year term.
Trump's most recent victory came Wednesday, when the court allowed him to remove three members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Emergency appeals — typically resolved in days without oral arguments and often with little to no explanation — have become an increasingly dominant part of the court's docket.
The administration's challenges affront some.
"The numbers are startling," said Kannon Shanmugam, head of the Supreme Court practice at Paul, Weiss during a Federalist Society event Thursday. "There are a lot of reasons for this growth, but I think the biggest reason, in some sense, is the disappearance of Congress from the scene."
The Justice Department says the spike in emergency petitions is a response to what it calls "activist" federal judges blocking the president's initiatives. At the same time, critics claim it shows the president is bypassing proper legal channels to force through controversial policies.
Nonetheless, Trump has prevailed at the Supreme Court. His administration has won all but two decided emergency appeals, with a third resulting in a partial victory. Wins have addressed a wide range of policies, including immigration, agency restructuring, and federal spending.
In part, the court recently allowed Trump to:
- Strip temporary protections from hundreds of thousands of migrants;
- Expedite deportations to countries where migrants have no ties;
- Freeze $65 million in teacher grants;
- Expand access to Social Security data for select federal personnel;
- Fire probationary federal employees.
One of Trump's most significant triumphs came last month when the justices limited lower courts' ability to issue nationwide injunctions, thereby restricting the power of a single federal court to control policy nationwide.
While conservative justices, such as Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, have defended the court's expedited decision-making, liberal justices have voiced concerns over what critics label the "shadow docket."
"Courts are supposed to explain things. That's what courts do," said Justice Elena Kagan during a judicial conference Thursday, when talking about expedited orders without written opinions.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has gone further, accusing her colleagues of "unleashing devastation" and putting the rule of law "in grave jeopardy."
Jim Thomas ✉
Jim Thomas is a writer based in Indiana. He holds a bachelor's degree in Political Science, a law degree from U.I.C. Law School, and has practiced law for more than 20 years.