The Supreme Court denied the Trump administration’s emergency application in Department of State v. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, No. 24A831, by a 5-4 vote on March 5, 2025, and the conservative commentariat immediately imploded. Roberts and Barrett joined Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson. Justice Alito’s dissent opened: “I am stunned.” Mike Davis called Roberts and Barrett “cowardly.” Multiple outlets ran “Do we have an Amy Coney Barrett problem?” My answer is no — and the reaction reflects a fundamental misreading of what SCOTUS actually did.
What the Court Actually Did — and Didn’t Do
Start with the procedural posture, because it determines everything. On February 25, D.C. District Judge Amir Ali ordered the government to pay roughly $2 billion to foreign-aid contractors for work they had already completed — work performed under fully executed contracts before February 13. The government sought a stay from the D.C. Circuit, which denied it. DOJ then raced to the Supreme Court. Chief Justice Roberts entered an administrative stay late on February 26, right before the payment deadline. The government then sought a full stay from all eight justices on the merits.
On March 5, the Court denied that application in a single unsigned paragraph. The per curiam order noted that because “the deadline in the challenged order has now passed” — Roberts’s own administrative stay had caused the original deadline to expire — the Court was sending the matter back to Judge Ali to clarify what compliance obligations remained going forward. The deadline was moot. The majority was not ordering payments to flow; it was declining to grant emergency relief on a messy, underdeveloped record after the operative deadline had already lapsed.
Let me be clear about what SCOTUS did not do. It did not rule that the President must fund USAID. It did not hold that the APA overrides executive spending authority or presidential impoundment power. It did not address whether DOGE’s actions were constitutional. None of those questions were before the Court. Shadow-docket denials of emergency applications are not legal precedent on the merits. The Court issued no majority opinion explaining its reasoning — because it issued no reasoning at all. This was one unsigned paragraph on a TRO enforcement deadline that had already expired.
Alito Was Right About the Substance — Wrong About What This Vote Signals
I have real respect for Alito’s dissent. His central argument — that the plaintiffs may be in the wrong court entirely — is substantively powerful and was not resolved by the majority. The APA waives sovereign immunity for “relief other than money damages.” Compelling the federal government to write $2 billion in checks looks functionally identical to money damages, which belong in the Court of Federal Claims under the Tucker Act, not in D.C. District Court under the APA. District Judge Ali was appointed only in December 2024, less than three months before these proceedings. The jurisdictional and sovereign immunity questions are live, unresolved, and very much available for future argument.
But Alito’s famous opener — “I am stunned” — projects from this vote to a conclusion about the majority’s views on the merits that the vote does not support. A shadow-docket denial of an emergency application on a moot TRO enforcement deadline, issued in the middle of ongoing preliminary injunction proceedings, tells us nothing definitive about how Roberts or Barrett will rule on presidential impoundment, the Tucker Act defense, or the constitutional limits of judicial power over executive spending. Alito is right that those questions deserved more serious engagement at the cert-stage level. He is not right that this 5-4 vote forecloses the administration’s position on the underlying questions.
What Barrett’s Vote Actually Means
Amy Coney Barrett has a documented, consistent pattern: she refuses shadow-docket emergency relief when the record is underdeveloped, regardless of which party is asking. TRO enforcement orders are not normally appealable at all — ever. The government was asking SCOTUS to intervene in an extraordinarily unusual procedural posture, at the TRO enforcement stage, before a preliminary injunction had even been entered, with no full briefing and no oral argument. Barrett’s refusal to intervene at that stage is entirely consistent with her prior practice. She has applied the same institutional restraint on emergency applications in other contexts.
The preliminary injunction proceedings — which are fully appealable as of right to the D.C. Circuit and then SCOTUS — are where this fight properly belongs. Barrett will have a developed record, briefing on jurisdiction, and the Tucker Act defense fully argued. Reading her vote on a shadow-docket TRO-stage application as a window into her views on DOGE, USAID, or presidential spending authority is a mistake. The constitutional fight over executive spending power is far from over — it is barely started.
The Lesson for Constitutional Battles Broadly
Stop reading shadow-docket tea leaves as merits rulings. This mistake costs credibility every time it gets made. When SCOTUS declines emergency intervention on the shadow docket, the nearly universal explanation is procedural: wrong posture, thin record, moot deadline. It is almost never a signal about how the Court will eventually rule on the constitutional question. The USAID litigation continues. The sovereign immunity defense lives. The Tucker Act argument lives. The underlying questions about whether a district judge can compel the executive branch to spend money on contracts it has terminated remain entirely open. Score this round inconclusive — not 5-4 against us.
This article is based on analysis by Professor Mark W. Smith, constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner 2nd Amendment channel. Watch the original video here. This does not constitute legal advice.