The Supreme Court Is Deciding Fewer Cases But Its Influence Continues to Grow

Last week, we discussed the Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia v. B.P.J. and what it means for Title IX and transgender participation in athletics. This week, we want to step back from any single opinion and look at a broader shift that may ultimately matter even more for schools than any one ruling. The Supreme Court itself is changing, and the way it is changing has direct consequences for how compliance professionals should be watching the Court going forward.

A Smaller Merits Docket, a Much Larger Emergency Docket

The Court recently concluded its October 2025 Term, deciding approximately 55 signed merits opinions. That number continues a decades-long trend toward hearing fewer full cases each year. Several decades ago, the Court routinely decided well over 100 cases annually. Fewer merits cases means fewer opportunities for the Court to resolve conflicting lower court decisions and provide nationwide clarity, which in education often translates into longer stretches of uncertainty while federal circuit courts reach different conclusions on issues affecting Title IX, ADA, First Amendment, immigration, and other compliance areas.

At the same time that the merits docket has shrunk, another part of the Court’s work has grown substantially. The Court is increasingly deciding nationally significant disputes through its emergency docket, sometimes called the shadow docket. Historically, emergency applications addressed whether a lower court order should temporarily remain in place while litigation continued. Today, emergency orders are increasingly resolving issues with immediate nationwide consequences and shaping how lower courts and litigants approach future cases. As a result, emergency docket decisions now carry far greater practical weight than they historically did.

What Is the Difference Between the Merits Docket and the Emergency Docket

For decades, most Supreme Court decisions followed a familiar path. A case would work its way through the lower courts, often over several years. The Court would then agree to hear it, receive extensive written briefs from the parties and interested organizations known as amicus briefs, hold oral arguments, and ultimately issue a lengthy written opinion explaining its reasoning. These are merits decisions, and they have traditionally been viewed as the Court’s primary vehicle for establishing precedent.

The emergency docket works differently. Rather than deciding an entire case, the Court is asked to resolve an immediate issue while the underlying litigation continues. Common requests include whether to temporarily block enforcement of a law, pause a lower court’s order, or allow a government action to take effect pending appeal. Historically, these orders were short, sometimes only a few pages or even a single sentence, and typically contained little or no explanation of the Court’s reasoning. They were intended to preserve the status quo until the Court could fully consider the case through its regular merits process.

That is no longer the full picture. Emergency orders today are increasingly resolving disputes with immediate nationwide consequences. Although these orders are still technically interlocutory, meaning they do not decide the underlying merits, they often determine what happens for months or even years while litigation proceeds. Lower courts, agencies, and litigants increasingly look to these orders for guidance, giving them substantial practical influence even when they fall outside the traditional merits process.

Why This Matters for You and Your Compliance Team

For educational institutions, the practical effect is significant. Schools may see major changes to federal funding, agency enforcement, immigration policy, or civil rights initiatives based on emergency rulings long before a case reaches a final merits decision. In some instances, the emergency ruling effectively becomes the governing legal landscape while litigation continues. That means compliance professionals can no longer afford to watch only the Court’s final opinions. Increasingly, operational decisions may be shaped by emergency orders issued months or even years before the Court ultimately resolves a case on the merits.

We will be unpacking several of these compliance implications in more depth at our upcoming Back to School webinars on August 5, with a K-12 session at 11 AM ET and a Higher Ed session at 1 PM ET.

Three Cases Worth Watching

Although this Term touched many areas of law, three themes stood out: civil rights, criminal law, and presidential power and executive authority. Last week’s Tuesday Takeaways examined one civil rights decision involving transgender participation in athletics. Here are three additional decisions from this Term that education leaders may want to keep on their radar.

Federal grant funding remains an area to watch. One of the most significant education-related rulings came through the emergency docket in National Institutes of Health v. American Public Health Association. There, the Court stayed a lower court order that required NIH to restore previously terminated federal research grants while litigation continued. The Court did not resolve the merits of the dispute, but the decision suggests that challenges seeking restoration of terminated federal funding may face significant jurisdictional hurdles, while broader challenges to agency policies may proceed differently. For colleges, universities, and other federal grant recipients, the ruling reinforces a practical reality: litigation over federal funding decisions may increasingly turn not only on whether an agency acted lawfully, but on where a challenge must be brought and what relief a court can grant while litigation is pending.

Executive authority continues to expand. Several decisions this Term addressed presidential authority over executive agencies. In Trump v. Slaughter, the Court expanded presidential authority to remove leaders of independent federal agencies, overruling long-standing precedent that had protected Federal Trade Commission commissioners from at-will removal. This was not an education case, but decisions like it may influence how future administrations direct agencies that affect educational institutions, including the U.S. Department of Education, OCR, and other federal regulators.

Civil rights protections continue to take shape through the Court’s docket, and this is an area where ICS is spending considerable time this fall. If your team is working through what these developments mean for Title IX and civil rights response protocols on the ground, our K-12 Compliance Symposium, held in partnership with Gwinnett County Public Schools, digs into exactly this territory. Elevating K-12 Compliance: Strengthening Title IX and Civil Rights Prevention and Response takes place September 30 and October 1 in Suwanee, Georgia.

Privacy and technology continue to evolve as well. In Chatrie v. United States, the Court held that the government’s use of geofence warrants to obtain location history constitutes a Fourth Amendment search. This was primarily a criminal law decision, but colleges and universities increasingly collect location information through Wi-Fi systems, identification cards, campus safety applications, and other technologies. The Court’s continued focus on digital privacy is worth watching as campus technology keeps expanding.

Tuesday Takeaways

The story of this Term is not simply that the Supreme Court decided fewer cases. It is that the Court is deciding cases differently. Between a smaller merits docket, heavier reliance on emergency orders, and ongoing questions about executive authority, institutions should expect legal developments to move faster and with less procedural predictability than in years past. For compliance professionals, that reinforces why it is no longer enough to track final Supreme Court opinions alone. Emergency orders, agency responses, and lower court litigation can all shape institutional obligations long before a case ever reaches the merits.

The Supreme Court’s shrinking merits docket and growing emergency docket mean compliance teams need to watch more than headline rulings. Emergency orders, agency responses, and pending litigation are increasingly where the real decisions are being made.