Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Ron Wyden said today he has joined Senate colleagues to introduce legislation to increase transparency of decisions on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket, also known as the “shadow docket,”a backdoor way for the Supreme Court to hand down consequential rulings with limited public argument or transparency.
“Trump’s hand-picked Supreme Court is increasingly relying on the shadow docket to legislate from the bench to push a far-right agenda,” Wyden said. “As the Trump administration has pushed the boundaries of institutions and trampled on due process, the court has relied on these covert rulings to hand down some of its most consequential decisions with real world impacts, leaving the American people entirely in the dark about how the rulings came to be. This legislation would help restore much-needed transparency and accountability to the most powerful court in our nation.”
The Shadow Docket Sunlight Act requires the Supreme Court to provide a written explanation for shadow docket decisions and a vote count detailing how each Justice voted on the decision, promoting public understanding and consistency in judicial decision making.
The Supreme Court has increasingly relied on the shadow docket—making decisions on short notice without oral argument or any legal explanation of the Court’s reasoning. The Court has utilized the shadow docket to make decisions on a number of wide-ranging, highly consequential cases, including the September 8, 2025 decision in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo. The decision allows ICE agents to stop and arrest individuals based on their appearance, the language they speak, where they live, and what they do for work.
The bill was led by U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and U.S. Representative Deborah Ross, D-N.C. In addition to Wyden, the bill was also cosponsored by U.S. Senators Cory Booker, D-N.J., Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., Alex Padilla, D-Calif., Jack Reed, D-R.I., Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Tina Smith, D-Minn., Peter Welch, D-Vt., and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.
The full text of the bill is here.
A web version of this release is here.
###