What happens next? While the court will probably not issue a decision until late June or early July, the unusual posture of the case could prompt quicker action.
As usual, the justices will cast tentative votes at a private conference in the coming days. In a typical case, the senior justice in the majority would then assign the majority opinion to a colleague or, just as likely, keep it. Draft opinions, almost certainly including concurrences and dissents, would be prepared and exchanged.
But this is not quite a typical case. It arrived at the court as an emergency application seeking partial stays of several lower-court rulings. Such applications are usually resolved with unsigned opinions whether they are argued or not, and rulings in them can come fast.
That was what happened in 2022, when the court took the unusual step of hearing fast-tracked oral arguments on stay applications concerning two Biden administration vaccine mandates. The majority opinions in the two decisions were unsigned, but they did included signed dissents.
Last year, though, the court granted a stay application in an environmental case several months after it was argued, in a signed decision.
On average, it takes the Supreme Court about three months after an argument to issue a decision. Rulings in a term’s biggest cases — and this one certainly qualifies — tend not to arrive until early summer, no matter how early in the term they were argued.
But, once again, the unusual posture of the case may affect matters. The vaccine cases were decided six days after they were argued. Those cases, like this one, were argued at special sessions on compressed timelines.
Adam Liptak covers the Supreme Court and writes Sidebar, a column on legal developments. A graduate of Yale Law School, he practiced law for 14 years before joining The Times in 2002.
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