The immediate return of “Trump wins” as the dominant desideratum of the Roberts Court’s Republicans
By That 24-hour period where the Roberts Court bore some resemblance to a court of law was the kind of emergency that needs to be addressed immediately through the shadow docket:
#BREAKING: #SCOTUS grants yet another stay to the Trump administration, putting back into place a new State Department policy requiring passports to display their bearers' biological sex at birth. Justice Jackson (joined by Justices Sotomayor and Kagan) once again dissents.
[image or embed]— Steve Vladeck (@stevevladeck.bsky.social) Nov 6, 2025 at 12:18 PM
As Jackson explains in her dissent, this is a classic example of a case where there is no case that the government would suffer “irreparable harm” if it was not permitted to force trans people seeking new passports (although not existing passport holders) from misrepresenting their current gender identity, unless the only operative legal standard is “Donald Trump suffers irreperable harm if he cannot do anything he wants immediately,” which of course it is:
The harm to the people that the administration is seeking to invidiously discriminate against, conversely, will be very material:
Does the majority offer any justificaiton for this farcial misweighting of equities beyond a couple of sentences of ipse dixits? I think you know the answer!
Vladeck’s new paper on the shadow docket is very much worth reading.