The Trump administration filed an emergency application to the Supreme Court on Thursday asking the justices to intervene, once again, in a fight over whether political parties are entitled to the same low-cost TV ad rates as candidates in the midterms.
The dispute deals with an obscure but critical part of the rules surrounding political advertising, on who can qualify for low-cost ad rates. Democrats have had an advantage in that area in recent years. With hotly contested elections looming, Democrats and Republicans have been fighting about the issue through the courts.
Democrats have been thought to benefit from the old rules, which limited low rates to candidates because they tended to raise more money than their party’s committees. The opposite is true for Republicans.
On Thursday afternoon, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., temporarily paused a lower-court ruling that would have required the Federal Communications Commission to wrap up its review of a new rule to expand who can qualify for the lower ad rates. He asked the challengers, a group of Democratic candidates, to respond to the Trump administration’s request to the court by Saturday at 5 p.m.
The announcement from the chief justice, who handles emergency applications from that region of the country, was a temporary victory for the administration.
Last month, the justices handed Republicans a victory, concluding that, at least for now, political parties and joint fund-raising committees were entitled to the same low-cost TV ad rates as candidates have long received.
The new emergency application was prompted by an appeals court decision on Wednesday against the administration on the issue. Solicitor General D. John Sauer urged the justices to overturn that ruling, calling it “a flagrant abuse” of the judiciary’s power to order a federal agency to take action and “a baseless effort to circumvent a prior” decision by the justices.
Shortly after Mr. Sauer filed his application, Republican groups similarly asked the justices to weigh in.
Under the 1971 Federal Election Campaign Act, which sets out regulations for how TV stations must interact with political candidates during election seasons, broadcasters are required, in the weeks before an election, to give political candidates low rates to buy TV ad time — a key way to reach voters.
Republicans have long claimed other political entities should also have access to the lower rates. The current tangled battle over the issue began in March, when the F.C.C. announced that broadcasters would be required for the first time to extend low-cost ad rates to political parties engaged in coordinated expenditures with candidates, as well as to joint fund-raising committees with political-party members.
Four Democratic candidates in key battlegrounds — Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia, former Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, former Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina and Representative Kristen McDonald Rivet of Michigan — objected and sued.
In August, a three-judge panel from the Fourth Circuit sided with the Democratic candidates.
National Republican groups then appealed to the Supreme Court and won in early September, allowing party committees to receive the lower ad rates as the lower court litigation continued.
As the case moved through the courts, the F.C.C. had yet to wrap up its review of the new policy. The candidates accuse the agency of purposely stalling in formalizing the ad scheme, potentially in an effort to forestall any court rulings against it before the November vote.
Yesterday, in a divided ruling, a three-judge panel on the Fourth Circuit agreed and ordered the F.C.C. to finalize its rules by noon on Friday.
Judges Robert B. King, a Clinton appointee, joined by James A. Wynn, an Obama appointee, wrote that the federal agency was “dragging its feet.” The court had “accorded the F.C.C. a substantial amount of grace, but its gamesmanship must end,” Judge King added.
Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a Reagan appointee, dissented, writing that in his view, the Supreme Court had already weighed in to allow the political parties and joint fund-raising committees to benefit from the low-cost ad rates in the midterms.
“Litigants far and wide will be eager to purchase the majority’s new board game: Make The Supreme Court Say It Twice,” he wrote, adding that “once is enough for me.”
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