On Aug. 12, an unusual emergency docket application captured court watchers’ attention. It centered on a dog named Bruce who was scheduled to die.
Bruce, a 3-year-old Great Pyrenees/German Shepherd mix who weighed about 120 pounds, was involved in four violent incidents over the past two years, according to Ventura County Animal Services. He bit three people, including a child, and knocked down a man “pushing his wife in a wheelchair.” After these attacks, VCAS asked a state court in California to clear the way for Bruce to be euthanized. In April, a judge did so, agreeing that he was “vicious” and posed “a significant threat” to the community.
This summer, Bruce’s owner, Claire Birgy, and the animal rescue from which she adopted him fought to save Bruce through a series of appeals. Last week, they threw a Hail Mary pass, urging the Supreme Court to intervene. “Applicants do not ask this Court to release Bruce, transfer Bruce, place Bruce in the community, or review the merits of the underlying state-court dangerous-dog determination. They ask only that Bruce … remain alive in the custody of [VCAS]” while litigation continues, read the application in Santa Paula Animal Rescue Center v. Ventura County, California.
Hours after the application was publicly docketed on the court’s website, news broke that Bruce was already dead. He was euthanized early on the afternoon of Aug. 12, before Justice Elena Kagan, who received the application, or the court had weighed in. (The next day, Kagan formally denied the request.)
Bruce’s case served as a reminder that the Supreme Court’s emergency docket consists of a wide range of matters, not just the applications in disputes over federal and state policies and capital cases that most people think of when they consider this area of the court’s work (and that get most of the media attention). Lesser-known filings addressing issues such as deportation proceedings, custody disputes, bail hearings, and financial disagreements also routinely appear on the justices’ desks.
The uptick in such applications plays a role in the current debate over the use – and potential abuse – of the emergency docket.
Emergency docket applications
No matter who they come from or what type of dispute they address, emergency docket applications share the same core goal: securing temporary relief. They do not ask the justices to take up an issue for oral argument and decide it on the merits, as Taraleigh Davis has explained in her coverage for SCOTUSblog. Instead, these applications urge the court to move quickly to prevent something from taking place – such as the temporary enforcement of an EPA rule seeking to curb planet-warming emissions from power plants – or to clear the way for something to happen, such as the construction of the new White House ballroom, the firing of an agency head, or a federal funding cut, while a dispute works its way through the lower courts.
Emergency applications include a brief description of lower-court proceedings and a discussion of why, in the applicant’s view, Supreme Court intervention is warranted. This discussion typically addresses the factors that courts consider when determining whether to grant temporary relief, including whether the applicant is likely to ultimately succeed on the merits and whether the applicant will be irreparably harmed if the Supreme Court doesn’t intervene.
Applications are filed, at least initially, with the justice assigned to the circuit from which they came, and many lesser-known types of requests, such as filings on deportation proceedings or fines, don’t make it out of that justice’s chambers. The circuit justice denies the application on his or her own, instead of referring it to the full court for consideration.
With higher-profile applications, on the other hand, the circuit justice often calls for a response from the other litigants involved in the dispute. Then, once the matter is fully briefed, the full court decides whether to grant or deny the request. Although individual justices – particularly those who disagree with the court’s decision – sometimes write an opinion to accompany the court’s order, the order itself is sometimes no more than one or two paragraphs long.
The lack of explanation for its rulings in more than two dozen cases brought to the court by the second Trump administration is one reason why the Supreme Court’s emergency docket has come under scrutiny in recent months. Another is the surge in applications – The New York Times recently reported that the number of emergency docket applications addressed by the full court each term has nearly doubled over the past decade – and whether that surge is interfering with the justices’ work on the oral argument docket.
Types of applications
As noted above, many court watchers associate the emergency docket with its highest-profile filings and assume it is primarily a place for the executive branch to seek relief from unfavorable lower-court rulings and for death-row inmates scheduled for execution to seek last-minute reprieves. But, in fact, most applications don’t fit into either of these categories.
Here’s a sampling of other types of requests the court has seen on its emergency docket in the past year:
- Election disputes: Most SCOTUSblog readers are likely aware that justices have addressed several emergency applications on congressional redistricting in recent months, some of which were prompted by the court’s April 29 ruling on the Voting Rights Act. They may be less familiar with other election-related filings, including an Ohio man’s request to be allowed to remain on the state’s Republican primary election ballot. Sam Ronan was removed from the ballot after election officials determined he was not truly a Republican, and Ronan contended that this decision violated the First Amendment. On April 9, the court denied his application without comment.
- Immigration cases: Since Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, his administration has filed a number of immigration-related emergency applications, including in the cases on the Temporary Protected Status program that the court took up for argument during the 2025-26 term. But the justices have also fielded immigration-related applications from individuals facing deportation. Such applicants urge the court to prevent their removal from the country, but their requests “are almost always denied without explanation,” as Chris Geidner recently reported on his Substack, Law Dork.
- Criminal proceedings: Some requests on the emergency docket stem from criminal proceedings, including efforts to be released from detention. For example, in September 2025, a man convicted of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute controlled substances asked the court to clear the way for him to appeal his sentence. And last month, a woman urged the justices to make it possible for her to be released on bail while awaiting trial on drug charges.
- Financial matters: Emergency applications regarding money judgments generally seek to stop funds from being moved. The applicants often contend that once the transfer is made, it will be impossible for them to get the money back, even if their appeal is ultimately successful. Conservative media personality Alex Jones filed one such application in October 2025, urging the justices to pause collection of a $1.4 billion judgment against him in a case over false claims he made about the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting while he appealed that ruling. The justices ultimately denied both the application and Jones’ petition for review in the case.
- Challenged laws: Over the past year, the justices received several requests addressing city- and state-level policies, in which the applicants asked the court to put the challenged laws on hold to prevent enforcement while their lawsuits continued. For example, a group of New York City clubs sought to block the city from implementing zoning restrictions – enacted in 2001 but never enforced – against businesses that devote less than 40% of their business to adult entertainment. Justice Sonia Sotomayor denied the application without referring it to the court.
An uptick in applications
During July hearings on the Supreme Court’s request for additional security funding, House and Senate lawmakers asked Justices Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett about the emergency docket, raising concerns about unexplained decisions in favor of the Trump administration and the volume of emergency applications filed with the court. For example, Rep. Mark Pocan, a Democrat from Wisconsin, questioned why the court is now handling more cases on the emergency docket than on the oral argument docket each term. “That definition of what’s an emergency certainly seems to have changed given the number of cases,” he said.
In her response to Pocan, Barrett emphasized that the court does not control the size of the emergency docket, because it must respond to every application it receives. But Kagan noted that the court may have unintentionally encouraged long-shot applications by granting too many requests. “People see that there is at least a potential for us to grant relief. And so, why not file a petition?,” she said.
Kagan reiterated that point during the Senate hearing on the Supreme Court’s budget request. “When people know that relief is available, there are a lot of smart lawyers out there in the world who are going to say why don’t we take our shot at that,” she said.
For some, the application on Bruce, which, as The New York Times reported, may have been “the first such request on behalf of a dog,” was further confirmation that the emergency docket is out of control. In an interview with the Times, Dan C. Bolton, one of the lawyers behind the request, acknowledged that the application was “a bit of a long shot,” but also made clear that, at least to Bruce’s supporters, it was a true emergency: “We’re just trying to preserve his life until it’s sorted out,” Bolton said.
Although it did not succeed, the Bruce application drew attention to the wide range of applications that make it to the court’s emergency docket. And as long as potential applicants retain the discretion to determine what types of emergencies warrant a request for relief, the content of this docket stands to grow even more diverse.