Whether referred to as the emergency docket or the shadow docket, the sharp increase in the number of U.S. Supreme Court decisions handled outside of the merits over the past few years has become a source of controversy. Emergency docket orders are unsigned, lack explanations, and frequently overturn both district and appellate decisions.
A shadow docket ruling issued on August 14, 2025, denied an application to vacate a stay allowing a Mississippi law imposing hefty social media access restrictions for minors to stay in effect while being adjudicated.
The order doesn't supply how the justices voted, but Justice Brett Kavanaugh's three-paragraph concurrence notes that he believes that the suit brought by NetChoice on behalf of social media companies "is likely to succeed on the merits" of its First Amendment violations claim. Until its likely return as part of the merits docket, the Mississippi law will remain in effect and enforceable.
Are AOL and MySpace on the List?
Attempting to address the dangers faced by minors on online social media sites, Mississippi legislators passed HB 1126 in 2024, which went into effect on July 1 of that year. Also referred to as the Walker Montgomery Protecting Children Online Act, HB 1126 requires verifiable consent from parents of minors to permit their children to access sites dedicated to social interaction. The targeted sites included YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (X), Snapchat, and others.
Sites that don't follow the law and block anyone under 18 from access without parental permission face fines of up to $10,000 per transgression. HB 1126 also threatens criminal penalties for non-compliance. It's interesting to note that the law offers exemptions for sites that are devoted to sports, news, commerce, or video games. Given the current concerns over predators stalking children on youth-oriented gaming sites like Roblox, it seems like a rather large loophole.
Detractors decried HB 1126 as a violation of First Amendment rights, with NetChoice, a trade association for social media companies, filing suit to strike down the law as unconstitutional. With precedent supporting its claim, on June 18, 2025, NetChoice was granted a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction by U.S. District Court Judge Halil Suleyman Ozerden enjoining Mississippi from enforcing HB 1126 against the companies it represented. Judge Ozerden reasoned that the state could find a less onerous solution.
This was followed just under a month later by a panel from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals granting a stay on the district court's ruling, which allowed the state to impose HB 1126 again. SCOTUS upholding a Fifth Circuit decision was a bit of a change, as it had reversed 10 of the previous 12 cases from that circuit.
What They Do in the Shadows
In the previous term, SCOTUS ruled on 44 cases in the emergency docket. So far this term, it has over 112 on the shadow docket, with more likely to be added. The increase is the result of the proliferation of executive orders issued by President Donald Trump and the constitutional and legislative challenges that most of them face.
Justice Kavanaugh tempered his admission that the Mississippi law is unconstitutional by stating that NetChoice hasn't "sufficiently demonstrated that the balance of harms and equities favors it at this time." With similar laws blocked in other states, this issue will likely include oral arguments as a merit docket case when it returns to SCOTUS.
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