What does the Trump administration want from the Supreme Court next?

Last week, the federal government joined President Donald Trump’s personal legal team in asking the Supreme Court to review an $83.3 million judgment against the president in a defamation case brought by journalist E. Jean Carroll. Trump’s lawyers contend that Trump was entitled to immunity in the case because he made the statements as part of his work as president. In its petition for review, the federal government agrees that Trump was acting as president when he spoke about Carroll and asserts that the government, not Trump, should be the defendant in Carroll’s case. That’s far from the only notable petition for review from the Trump administration pending before the Supreme Court this summer. In recent months, the federal government has appealed rulings on immigration policy, the Second Amendment, the U.S. DOGE Service, and several other legal issues, and it’s expected to file at least one more significant petition for review, on transgender troops, by the end of August. Here’s a brief overview of some of these petitions for review, which will likely be considered by the justices at their “long conference” on Sept. 28. A “critically important” immigration question The petition for review that appears most likely to make it to the oral argument docket next term is Raycraft v. Lopez-Campos, a case on the administration’s policy of detaining noncitizens who have been apprehended within the United States (as opposed to at the border) without the opportunity for a bond hearing. Announced in July 2025, this policy has fueled thousands of lawsuits, and it’s at the center of a growing disagreement between the federal courts of appeals, known as a “circuit split.” The Trump administration’s detention guidelines rest on 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(2)(A), a section of federal immigration law addressing an immigration officer’s evaluation of whether a noncitizen has a legal right to enter the United States. Section 1225(b)(2)(A) states that noncitizens “shall be detained” for a removal proceeding “if the examining immigration officer determines that” they are “not clearly and beyond a doubt entitled to be admitted” to the United States. As the Lopez-Campos petition explains, until the Trump administration issued its guidelines last year, government officials typically did not apply Section 1225 to noncitizens who already had entered the U.S. and spent years or even decades here. Instead, such noncitizens were held under a separate detention provision: Section 1226. Unlike Section 1225(b)(2)(A), Section 1226 authorizes the attorney general to release noncitizens awaiting deportation proceedings on a “bond of at least $1,500” or “conditional parole.” By holding noncitizens apprehended within the country under Section 1225 instead of 1226, the Trump administration has sought to detain them without bond. According to a Politico analysis, judges across the country have rejected the government’s conclusion that noncitizens apprehended within the U.S. can be held under Section 1225 and “delivered more than 9,300 rulings against the administration’s” mandatory detention guidelines since they took effect last year. However, federal appeals courts have split on the policy. While six have ruled against the administration – including the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 9th Circuit and 7th Circuit last week – the 5th and 8th Circuits sided with the government, agreeing that noncitizens who entered the country illegally are applicants for admission for the purposes of Section 1225 and thus are not entitled to a bond hearing. In Lopez-Campos, the Trump administration is appealing the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit’s May ruling against the detention guidelines, in which it held that it was unlawful for the government to detain the challengers under Section 1225. In the petition for review, filed in June, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer highlights what was then a 3-2 (and is now a 6-2) circuit split over the policy and calls on the justices to resolve the “critically important question” of whether Section 1225 applies to noncitizens who “are present in the United States without having been admitted” and whether those noncitizens must therefore “be detained while their removal proceedings unfold.” Until there is a definitive answer on this issue, Sauer asserts, “the volume of [such] litigation” over the administration’s detention policy “will continue to impose immense burdens on district courts and U.S. Attorney’s Offices throughout the nation.” In late July, the Trump administration filed a second petition for review on the detention policy, this one addressing a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, which, like the 6th Circuit, held that detention of noncitizens apprehended within the country is governed by Section 1226, not 1225. In the government’s appeal, Sauer points the justices to the petition for review in Lopez-Campos, asking them to take up that case for argument and hold the newer petition until it rules on Lopez-Campos. (The 5th Circuit’s decision in favor of the administration also has been appealed to the Supreme Court.) Access to government data When Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, he launched the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency, and empowered it to “maximize governmental efficiency and productivity” by promoting technological advancements and reducing waste. DOGE’s work sparked controversy and legal battles, as watchdog groups questioned its access to Americans’ personal data and the mass layoffs it championed. Less than a week after DOGE was created, one such watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking internal DOGE communications, as well as messages exchanged between DOGE and federal agencies. In February 2025, the group filed a lawsuit aimed at forcing disclosure of these documents. DOGE countered that it did not qualify as a federal agency under FOIA and was therefore exempt from its requirements. In considering whether DOGE is subject to FOIA, a federal district judge in Washington granted many of CREW’s discovery requests, ordering DOGE to provide it with details about staff members and its communications with government agencies as both sides prepared their arguments over FOIA’s scope. The federal government appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which declined to pause the judge’s order, and then to the Supreme Court on its emergency docket, asking the justices to block the discovery order. Sauer asserted that the order essentially forced DOGE to comply with the FOIA request. On June 6, 2025, the Supreme Court, in a 6-3 vote along ideological lines, granted a stay, holding that “separation of powers concerns counsel judicial deference and restraint in the context of discovery regarding internal Executive Branch communications.” The court sent the dispute back to the D.C. Circuit for another look. Over the past year, both the district court and the D.C. Circuit have reconsidered the case – after CREW narrowed its discovery request – and ruled that DOGE must provide “detailed information” on current and former DOGE employees, “directives” sent by the DOGE administrator to staff members, and efforts to gain access to data held by federal agencies, among other documents. In its petition for review in U.S. DOGE Service v. U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the Trump administration argues that the lower courts have “departed” from the Supreme Court’s June 2025 order, failing to address the separation of powers issues. It urges the justices to take up the case and address what types of discovery orders are appropriate in disputes over access to government information, contending that such legal battles are becoming more common. “[A]llowing the decision below to stand and far-reaching discovery to proceed would sow mischief in countless future cases seeking discovery against high-ranking officials,” Sauer writes. GVR requests The Trump administration also has filed two petitions in which it does not actually ask the court to hear oral arguments on the issues presented in the disputes. Instead, it seeks to have the justices grant the petitions, vacate (or throw out) the decisions below, and send the disputes back to the lower courts for reconsideration in light of a recent Supreme Court ruling – a disposition known as a “GVR.” The first such petition is United States v. Hembree, which the government filed on April 24. Hembree centers on 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), which is often referred to as the felon-in-possession statute. It bars individuals who have been convicted of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a year or more from having a gun. In Hembree, the 5th Circuit held that Section 922(g)(1) is unconstitutional as applied to Charles Hembree, whose “single predicate felony conviction” was “for simple possession of methamphetamine.” The 5th Circuit rejected the government’s contention that disarming Hembree is comparable to early Americans’ effort to disarm “dangerous individuals” and to severely punish people convicted of possessing contraband, such as a stolen horse. Although the 5th Circuit’s decision deepened a disagreement between the federal courts of appeals over the felon-in-possession statute, the Trump administration did not ask the Supreme Court to resolve this circuit split in its petition in Hembree. It instead requested that the petition be held until the court decided United States v. Hemani, a challenge to the constitutionality of the prosecution of a Texas man who regularly uses marijuana for violating a law barring drug users from possessing a gun, and then have the case sent back to the lower court for reconsideration in light of that ruling. But as Hemani’s author, Justice Neil Gorsuch, made clear, that ruling did “not address ... §922(g)(1)’s provision disarming individuals convicted of felonies.” So far this year, the justices have denied three other petitions for review from the government on the felon-in-possession statute. The second GVR request is in Mullin v. National TPS Alliance, a dispute over the Trump administration’s effort to end deportation protections for Venezuelan and Haitian nationals living in the U.S. Last year, a federal district judge in California twice blocked the administration from terminating such protections, and the 9th Circuit twice declined to put those decisions on hold with regard to the Venezuelan nationals while the administration appealed. After the 9th Circuit issued those decisions, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on its emergency docket to pause the district court’s orders, and the court agreed to do so, effectively clearing the way for the administration to deport the Venezuelan nationals while litigation continued. A 9th Circuit panel then considered the case on the merits and, in a January ruling, affirmed the district court’s decision preventing the Trump administration from ending Venezuelan and Haitian nationals’ participation in the Temporary Protected Status program. Specifically, the 9th Circuit rejected the administration’s contention that courts do not have the authority to review TPS designations and held that then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem exceeded her statutory authority when she ended the deportation protections. In its petition for review, the government asks the justices to order the 9th Circuit to reconsider the case in light of Mullin v. Doe, in which the Supreme Court held, in a June 25 ruling, that the federal law creating the TPS program generally bars courts from reviewing the government’s decisions about TPS designations. “A GVR would ... allow the Ninth Circuit to reconsider its holding with the benefit of this Court’s guidance,” Sauer wrote in the petition. The response is due on Aug. 12. More to come Later this month, the Trump administration is expected to file another significant petition for review at the Supreme Court. On July 16, officials told the D.C. Circuit that they intended, by Aug. 30, to appeal that court’s ruling barring the administration from applying its “policy disqualifying from military service individuals with a history of gender dysphoria” against the transgender troops involved in the lawsuit. Last year, the Supreme Court considered the policy on its emergency docket and paused an order by a federal judge in Washington state that was much broader than the D.C. Circuit’s decision and prevented the federal government from implementing the policy anywhere in the country. The court’s three Democratic appointees indicated they would leave the order in place but did not explain why. As this article makes clear, the 2026-27 term is shaping up to be another busy – and consequential – one for the president and his administration. Recommended Citation: Kelsey Dallas, What does the Trump administration want from the Supreme Court next?, SCOTUSblog (Aug. 5, 2026, 9:30 AM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/08/what-does-the-trump-administration-want-from-the-supreme-court-next/