Supreme Court docket jam-packed despite summer recess

The Supreme Court may be on its summer recess, but its docket is still plenty busy. 

After a decision season that saw landmark case after landmark case that will define history, emergency appeals from the Biden administration and Republican state attorneys general have made the justices’ summer jam-packed. 

For starters, a ruling is expected anytime on three Republican-led states' challenge to President Biden’s latest student loan plan. On Monday, the Biden administration asked to narrow rulings freezing its sweeping Title IX changes in some states. 

And on Tuesday, 25 Republican state attorneys general urged the high court to halt the administration’s power plant rules. 

The pile-up of applications thrusts the Supreme Court into major disputes even as they remain off the bench until the start of their next term in October. 

The justices usually act on emergency appeals quickly in a matter of days or weeks, including during their summer recess. The truncated process normally does not include oral arguments and the justices sometimes don’t even discuss the case in person.

Student debt 

Two weeks ago, the legal battle over student debt returned to the Supreme Court, which previously struck down Biden’s plan that would’ve forgiven $430 billion in student loans to more than 40 million borrowers. 

Republican state attorneys general in Alaska, South Carolina and Texas now want the justices to partially block Biden’s latest plan, known as the Saving on Valuable Education (SAVE) program. The states contend it likewise exceeds the administration’s authority, assertions that the Biden administration rejects. 

“It ignored this Court’s clear instruction that only Congress may forgive loans en masse—something Congress has conspicuously chosen not to do,” the state attorneys general wrote in court papers filed on Friday. 

The three states urged the justices to reinstate an injunction that would block a provision lowering the monthly payment cap for millions of borrowers based on their income. 

The written briefing is complete, meaning the court could rule anytime. 

No matter how it shakes out, however, a separate federal appeals court last week temporarily halted the entire SAVE plan until it can decide whether to grant a longer pause. That challenge is spearheaded by Missouri alongside six other Republican-led states. 

Title IX 

As the Justice Department fights to preserve its student debt plan, it has meanwhile filed two emergency applications of its own at the Supreme Court on another controversial issue. 

The applications urge the justices to narrow a pair of lower injunctions blocking the Education Department’s new Title IX rule from going into effect in certain states. Republicans have challenged the sweeping changes, which would extend the sex-discrimination law’s protections to cover sexual orientation and gender identity for the first time. 

The Biden administration contends that the injunctions, which block the entire new regulation, sweep too far. Title IX also bolsters protections for pregnant and parenting students and change how schools handle claims of sexual harassment and assault. 

In court filings, the Justice Department argued that only the prohibition on gender identity discrimination at the center of the lawsuits should remain frozen at this stage of this case. The department is expected to still defend that provision down the road. 

Ten Republican-led states where the rule is blocked — Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia — are due to respond by Friday to the administration’s request to the Supreme Court. 

Power plant rule 

A challenge to the Biden administration's updated climate standards for power plants is also landing at the Supreme Court. 

All of the nation’s 27 Republican state attorneys general have sued over the new standards, which the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released in April nearly two years after the Supreme Court blocked the Obama-era version of the plan. 

After losing in a lower court last week, 25 of the states filed an emergency motion on Tuesday urging the Supreme Court to halt the plan, calling the new case “déjà vu all over again.” 

“The effort is perhaps subtler than EPA’s last try; it hasn’t given the Rule a special name or coined any new terms. 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,” the states wrote, led by West Virginia and Indiana. 

The fossil fuel industry and the two other Republican-led states could still file appeals separately. 

Decided matters

The pending appeals follow what was already a buzzing emergency docket after the court released its final opinions of the term at the start of the month. 

The court this month has acted on two death row inmates’ bids to halt their executions, in a rare move granting one request while denying another, as is more common. 

On Monday, Justice Neil Gorsuch denied a former Colorado county clerk’s emergency motion to block her imminent criminal trial. 

Tina Peters, the clerk, is accused of unlawfully allowing a copy of hard drives from her county’s voting equipment to be made during a software update. Peters said she did so while investigating 2020 election fraud. 

Peters pleaded not guilty to all 10 of her charges and claims her prosecution is politically motivated. The trial is set to begin on July 29 after Gorsuch declined her long-shot request to intervene on Monday. 

Gorsuch, who by default handles emergency appeals arising from Colorado, issued his order while he was scheduled to be in Portugal teaching law students. 

And last week, the full court declined to delay three Texas protesters’ one-week jail sentence on charges following their protest of a Confederate monument outside a local courthouse in 2020. There were no public dissents.