Supreme Court’s ‘shadow docket’ surges with decisions looming on student loans, elections, abortion and climate

Less than a month ago, Justice Elena Kagan had suggested the Supreme Court consider dialing back its review of significant cases on its controversial emergency docket.

Less than a month ago, Justice Elena Kagan suggested the Supreme Court consider dialing back its review of significant cases on its controversial emergency docket. “Our summers used to be actually summers,” Kagan told a group of judges in California, lamenting the “relentless” filing of emergency appeals.  “We’ve gotten into a pattern where we’re doing too many of them.” Since then, the Supreme Court’s emergency caseload has exploded. In coming days, the high court is expected to tackle short-fuse challenges to President Joe Biden’s latest effort to reduce student debt and to cut planet-warming pollution by limiting power plant emissions. And the court must decide whether Arizona, a presidential battleground, may require thousands of people to prove their US citizenship before voting this year. Also pending is a fight over Biden’s requirement that family planning clinics that receive federal public health funding provide referrals for abortions for patients who request it. The court’s emergency docket – the “shadow docket,” to critics – is where the justices deal with questions that need resolution faster than the months it can take to submit briefs, hear oral arguments and draft formal opinions on its regular docket.The cases usually deal with the narrow question of what will happen as that underlying legal process plays out. But the orders can have significant and immediate real-world consequences. “There’s just no disputing that this has been a busier summer for emergency applications, both by volume and by significance, than any summer we’ve seen in a long time – if ever,” said Steve Vladeck, a CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, who says the court is essentially inviting these cases by issuing emergency rulings with more impact.