The final actions of the 2023 term took place with some Friday orders.
The Supreme Court granted thirteen more cases (technically 15, but two sets cover the same topic), including one involving Mexico and guns. It did not block two EPA rules.
As Steve Vladeck noted:
The Court also ended the week (and the October 2023 Term) with two unsigned, unexplained rulings on Friday—rejecting, without public dissent, two of the three sets of applications challenging new EPA rules.
(The denials were of the challenges to the new methane and mercury standards; the eight even more important challenges to the new power-plant emissions rules filed back in July remain pending.)
As Amy Howe noted in the linked discussion:
The court has not yet acted on a third set of requests to stay a different EPA rule, aimed at reducing emissions of carbon dioxide by power plants. Those requests were filed beginning in late July and have been fully briefed for over a month.
The reasons why here are not clarified though Vladeck noted on Twitter that the implication is that the justices are more divided about this final set of regulations. Court watchers thrive on this stuff.
These actions completed the term's "emergency" docket, part of its "shadow" docket (Vladeck wrote a book on that):
For those scoring at home, that brings the total number of full Court rulings on emergency applications for OT2023 to 122(!) That’s the most, by quite a fair margin, since I’ve been tracking the total (OT2022’s total, for comparison, was 76, and OT2021’s total was 72.)
The Supreme Court first had terms in August (they met in New York City; August in D.C. in 1789 was rather unpleasant) and February. They also started "the first Monday" of the month.
The current first Monday in October practice began in 1917. It is set by Congress. As Vladeck notes, the term began the second Monday in 1873, but additional work warranted pushing things forward a week.
The Supreme Court disposed of its "long conference" work by dropping a housekeeping order this morning. What stands out for me is that the liberals (Kagan and Jackson here) continued to explain why they did not take part in certain cases while all conservatives continued to fail to follow their lead.
It is unclear why this is so. What it implies to me is that the conservatives do not want to do the bare minimum here, namely openly apply their guidelines to help show the public they can be trusted.
A mild lesson to the voting public as they are already starting to vote in the November elections. The Court is on the ballot.
ETA: There has been some singling out of the Supreme Court -- among the many cases not taken -- refusing a Biden Administration request involving emergency abortion care in Texas.
After they punted in a related Idaho case at the end of last term, I do not think it too surprising that the justices do not want to immediately address this issue.
It should be noted that the Supreme Court more often than not does grant the case when the U.S. government so requests. At least, that was the general norm. Do not know how the statistics these days.
The Supreme Court does not take cases, including those with appealing facts, for a variety of reasons. Overall, even if the denial was justified (no justice commented), the baseline fact that Dobbs continues to threaten the life and health of women is true.