The Supreme Court now decides major national policy through emergency orders that take effect in days, with no full briefing, no oral argument, and often no signed opinion explaining the decision. A rule that controls the whole country can arrive in a paragraph, released at any hour, with no record of how each justice voted.
This is not how the highest court should make the most important decisions. When the Court strips protected status from hundreds of thousands of people, or lets the president fire officials Congress chose to protect, the public deserves to know why and who voted for it. A family that loses its legal status has nowhere to read the reasoning. A voter has no way to hold a justice accountable for a decision no one signed.
The government asked the Supreme Court for emergency relief 8 times in the 16 years before 2017. It filed 35 in the first 18 months of 2025 and 2026. Of 31 rulings on the administration's actions since January 2025, the Court sided with it at least partly in 23, and seven came with no written explanation. Emergency relief has a place, but it should not be the main way the country's biggest legal questions get answered in secret.
I am asking you to support the Shadow Docket Sunlight Act, reintroduced this Congress as S.3533 and H.R.6816. The bill would require the Supreme Court to publish a written explanation and a recorded vote for every emergency order on a stay or injunction. It does not take away the Court's power to act quickly. It only ends the secrecy.
Please co-sponsor shadow-docket transparency legislation and push for a hearing. The Court should explain decisions that change the law for everyone, and say who voted for them.
