Trump v. Slaughter · ¶240

The majority points to a handful of recent lower court decisions from the past year or so that purportedly show that “no one knows how to apply Humphrey's in practice.” Ante, at 457. That tumult, though, is more fairly attributed to the Court's recent emergency-docket abandonment of Hum phrey's. See, e. g., Space Exploration Technologies Corp. v. NLRB, 151 F. 4th 761, 776–777 (CA5 2025); see also Trump v. Wilcox, 605 U. S. 922, 925 (2025) (Kagan, J., dissenting) (criticizing the majority for using the “emergency docket . . . to overrule or revise existing law”). When the Court fails to adhere to its own precedents in a principled manner, it is hard to expect consistency from the lower courts that must keep up with the Court's rapidly shifting views. For decades before this Court upended the doctrine, however, Hum phrey's was a stable, easily understood precedent of this Court.

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