Accountability at the Court Part 4: Looking Ahead
October Term 25 will start soon, and it brings more opportunities for the Supreme Court to weaken the tools of accountability. Here are few to pay attention to.
On the merits docket, in The GEO Group, Inc. v. Menocal, No. 24-758, the Court will consider a suit challenging ICE’s arrangement with a private prison company to detain people awaiting immigration proceedings at the company’s facility in Aurora, Colorado, where they are forced to clean the housing units and also perform additional work for $1 per day through a “voluntary work program.” Menocal v. GEO Group, Inc., No. 22-1409, 2024 WL 4544184, at *2 (10th Cir. Oct. 22, 2024). When a class of people detained by ICE brought suit in federal court, the private company attempted to claim categorical immunity from suit as a contractor of the federal government, purportedly deriving immunity from the federal government’s sovereign immunity. Id. at *3. When the district court rejected that theory, the company attempted to take an immediate appeal, but the Court of Appeals held that it could not do so under ordinary rules of appellate jurisdiction until the case had reached a final decision on the merits. Id. at *4. The private company petitioned for the Supreme Court’s review, claiming that the type of “derivative sovereign immunity” it was claiming should be reviewed immediately given its nature and importance. What the Supreme Court says about that contention could have significant implications not only in how early private contractors can seek an appeal, but also how such a novel claim of “immunity” is addressed on the merits.
Also on the merits docket, the Court will consider expanding the Heck doctrine even further in Olivier v. City of Brandon, No. 24-993. In that case, police officers charged someone with violating an anti-protest ordinance, and he sued under Section 1983, seeking an injunction against the enforcement of the ordinance under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Olivier v. City of Brandon, No. 22-60566, 2023 WL 5500223, at *2 (5th Cir. Aug. 25, 2023). The Fifth Circuit recognized that the plaintiff was not in custody, and therefore legally ineligible to file a habeas petition. Id. at *4. In addition, he was not challenging any existing conviction; he sought only “prospective” injunctive relief against future prosecutions. Id. Nevertheless, the court applied the Heck doctrine to bar his suit. The plaintiff petitioned the Supreme Court to review, arguing that Heck should not apply to claims of prospective injunctive relief, and that Heck should not apply where habeas relief is not available. Although Olivier concerns local officials, not federal officials, the Supreme Court’s decision could have far-reaching effects, including on its recent uses of the Heck doctrine in the shadow docket.
On the emergency docket, the Court continues to receive applications concerning stays and injunctions sparked by the Trump Administration’s policies. In Department of State v. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, No. 25A269, the Administration sought a stay of an injunction issued by a federal district court against the Administration’s withholding of congressionally appropriated funds due to be provided for foreign assistance. In Trump v. Slaughter, No. 25A264, the Administration sought another stay of an injunction issued by a federal district court against the President’s firing of an FTC Commissioner.
In these and other shadow docket cases, the Court may continue to alter the scope of federal courts’ equity jurisdiction, with the intent of restricting the lower federal courts. In one shadow docket decision this summer, the Court noted that its “interim orders are not conclusive as to the merits,” but do “inform how a court should exercise its equitable discretion in like cases.” Trump v. Boyle, No. 25A11, 145 S. Ct. 2653, 2654 (U.S. July 23, 2025). And in another recent shadow docket case, Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh wrote separately to chastise a federal district court for purportedly failing to adhere to the Supreme Court’s largely unexplained shadow docket rulings. National Institutes of Health v. American Pub. Health Ass’n, No. 25A103, 145 S. Ct. 2658, 2663 (U.S. Aug. 21, 2025). The district judge—Senior Judge William Young, a Reagan appointee who has served for 47 years—later apologized, explaining that he did not realize that the Court’s brief, rushed, emergency orders “were precedent.”
We should all be watchful for the Court’s next moves and how it chooses to modify the tools for holding federal officials accountable. We will all need whatever is left of them, especially in light of the current Administration.