What is a Supreme Court emergency application?

Not every request to the Supreme Court is a full appeal. A party can also file an application asking for quick, interim relief, such as a stay of a lower court's order while an appeal continues, or an injunction. These requests make up what is often called the Court's emergency docket (critics and commentators sometimes call it the "shadow docket").

How to recognize one

Applications get their own docket numbers with an "A" in the middle, such as 25A123, where the first digits are the term year. Regular petitions use a hyphen instead, such as 25-123.

Who decides

Each federal circuit is assigned to one Justice, called the Circuit Justice for that circuit. An application from that circuit goes to that Justice first, who can act alone or refer it to the full Court. Many significant applications are referred to the full Court. The resulting order is often brief and unsigned, though Justices sometimes write concurrences or dissents. A ruling by a single Justice acting alone is called an in-chambers opinion.

How these rulings differ from merits decisions

A ruling on an application is usually decided without full briefing and oral argument, and it typically governs only while the underlying case continues. That is why we never present one as a merits decision.

How SCOTUS Alerts labels them

We tag these ⚡ "Emergency application" everywhere they appear and send them in a separate email from merits decisions. Because the emergency docket runs year-round, these alerts can arrive in any month. See how we label every writing.