Less than three weeks into the Supreme Court’s 2026-27 term, the page reserved for opinions in argued cases already has an entry: FCC v. Brown. The unsigned, five-page ruling responds to the FCC’s emergency request to block a lower court order, making it far longer than the court’s usual terse interim docket orders. The posting reflects a recent shift: since late August, the court has issued more substantial written decisions in emergency cases.
That shift, however, has created a website headache. Emergency docket decisions now appear in one of three places on supremecourt.gov, depending on how much writing the justices produced and whether a named justice or the whole court authored it. Some, like FCC v. Brown, show up on the “Opinions of the Court” page alongside fully argued cases. Others remain on the separate “Opinions Relating to Orders” page when the majority gives only a brief explanation but individual justices attach longer concurrences or dissents.
Readers can spot most interim cases by the “A” in the docket number, such as 26A388, rather than the hyphen used for argued cases. But even that rule has exceptions. In Trump v. Cook, an emergency application was taken up for argument, so it has both an “A” and a justice’s initials in the “Justice” column. The result is a website that now requires insider knowledge just to find the court’s most urgent rulings.