A snapshot of the Supreme Court's 2025-26 interim relief docket – and some surprises on it

SCOTUSblog’s snapshot covers the Supreme Court’s 2025–26 interim-relief docket, which includes requests for urgent action while cases continue through the courts. The report separates substantive applications from capital cases and repeated filings, and also discusses a small number of additional matters outside those main groups. These categories help explain why a single overall grant rate can obscure different kinds of requests.

The Trump administration filed nine applications in the period covered and received relief in five, a reported grant rate of 56%. The comparable figure cited for the previous term was 19 grants out of 21 applications, or about 90%. Those percentages describe small groups of emergency applications and should not be read as a general measure of the Court’s decisions in fully argued cases.

The number of substantive applications declined from 49 to 36. Non-administration applicants filed 27 substantive applications, close to the previous term’s 26. The Court granted 18 of the 36 substantive applications, a rate of 50%, compared with 53% in the prior term. The totals describe applications, not necessarily unique disputes or final outcomes on the merits.

The report also tracks public disagreement and written explanations. The justices publicly disagreed in 22 of the 36 substantive applications, or 61%, down from 76% the prior term. Written opinions accompanied 39% of substantive applications, compared with 31% previously. The report notes that recorded dissents appeared in 89% of grants and 33% of denials, showing that visible disagreement was more common when the Court granted relief.

Capital and refiled applications followed different patterns. The Court denied all 41 requests to stay executions in the capital cases covered, while granting two of three state requests to proceed with executions. It denied all 43 applications identified as refilings. The linked report provides the definitions and case-by-case data behind these figures; emergency rulings are often preliminary and do not by themselves resolve the underlying legal questions.