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By Katherine Fung
Senior Writer
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There are still three months until the next Supreme Court term begins, but we could hear from the justices on a number of major issues before the first Monday of October.
A flurry of emergency appeals have been filed with the court in recent weeks, and although the justices are on summer recess after an explosive 2023-2024 term, they usually act on these cases within weeks, if not days, even while on break.
The shadow docket involves cases that are handled on an expedited basis. They also don't require oral arguments and are often decided by unsigned orders that have little to no explanation of which justices are in the majority.
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The Supreme Court currently has four major requests for emergency relief. Each involves major political issues, such as student loan debt, Title IX, climate change standards, and former President Donald Trump's felony conviction.
Student Debt
The case that could be decided as early as today is Alaska v. Department of Education. Republican state attorneys general in Alaska, South Carolina and Texas are asking the Supreme Court to partially block President Joe Biden's Saving on Valuable Education (SAVE) program.
The Supreme Court previously struck down Biden's forgiveness plan last year, which would have eliminated $430 billion in student loans for more than 40 million borrowers. After the blow, the Biden administration unveiled the SAVE program, the most generous income-driven repayment plan to date. So far, around 8 million borrowers have signed up for SAVE, according to the White House.
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The red states argue that, like the debt forgiveness plan, the Biden administration overstepped its authority with the SAVE program.
To complicate the matter, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eight Circuit, in a different case, granted an administrative stay last week, siding with Missouri and other Republican-led states in blocking the program.
"Borrowers enrolled in the SAVE plan will be placed in an interest-free forbearance while our administration continues to vigorously defend the SAVE plan in court," Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement after the appeals court's decision.
Title IX
The Biden administration has also filed a pair of emergency applications with the Supreme Court in Department of Education v. Louisiana and Cardona v. Tennessee. The cases urge the justices to narrow a pair of nationwide injunctions issued by lower courts that blocked the Education Department's new Title IX rules from going into effect.
The department's new changes expand sex discrimination protections to cover sexual orientation and gender identity, bolster protections for pregnant students, and amend the ways in which schools deal with sexual harassment and assault claims.
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The Solicitor General is asking the Supreme Court for "partial" stays of the injunctions, which the Justice Department argues go too far.
Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito have ordered the Republican-led states where the rule is blocked to respond to the applications by noon ET on Friday, days before the provisions are supposed to go into effect on August 1. Those states include Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.
Climate Change Regulation
The Supreme Court also received an emergency application from West Virginia and 24 other Republican state attorneys general, who want to bypass the D.C. Circuit in a case about new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards that updated requirements for power plant emissions.
The emergency application comes after the red states lost in a lower court last week.
The attorneys general are asking the justices to halt the plan, which they argue is "déjà vu" of the Obama-era version of the power plant rule. The previous plan was blocked by the Supreme Court two years ago.
"The effort is perhaps subtler than EPA's last try; it hasn't given the Rule a special name or coined any new terms," the states wrote. "But it's no less problematic, setting impossible-to-meet standards for regulated facilities, stripping away the States' discretion to patch up the damage, and ultimately pushing regulated sources into early retirements."
Trump's Conviction
The Supreme Court saved its long-awaited decision on Trump's immunity arguments until the last day of the 2023-2024 term, releasing it as the court's final ruling last term. Now, the court is being asked again to weigh into a matter directly impacting the former president and Republican nominee.
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Earlier this month, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey asked the Supreme Court for permission to file a complaint against New York to stay Trump's September 18 sentencing hearing and gag order. The request comes less than two months after a Manhattan jury convicted Trump of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
Bailey, a Republican, argued, in part, that New York was infringing on Missouri voters' right to hear from a presidential candidate.
New York Attorney General Letitia James responded to Bailey's request on Wednesday, telling the Supreme Court that Missouri had no legal basis to go to the justices.
She argued that the type of relief being sought could only be granted through state courts and that "allowing Missouri to file this suit for such relief against New York would permit an extraordinary and dangerous end-run around former President Trump's ongoing state court proceedings and the statutory limitations on this Court's jurisdiction to review state court decisions."
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