On Friday, the Supreme Court handed down a brief order permitting the Department of Government Efficiency, the enigmatic White House entity that billionaire Elon Musk previously ran, to access a wide range of sensitive information kept by the Social Security Administration — including many individuals’ bank account numbers and medical records. All three of the Court’s Democrats dissented from the Court’s order in Social Security Administration v. AFSCME.

Realistically, it was always likely that the Trump administration would eventually prevail in this case. As Solicitor General D. John Sauer argues in the administration’s brief, the plaintiffs in AFSCME “do not contend that their information has been shared with parties outside the government.” Rather, this case boils down to whether the courts can second-guess the executive branch’s decisions about which government employees may see data that is already held by the government. These sorts of internal management decisions typically are not subject to judicial review.

Yet, while the result in AFSCME isn’t surprising, the case reveals a schism within the Court — and it highlights how the Trump administration has managed to successfully circumvent normal court procedures to quickly get their grievances before a largely sympathetic Supreme Court.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissenting opinion primarily focuses on her concerns over the rapidity with which the Court hears Trump cases, and she argues that her Republican colleagues appear to have abandoned an important limit on the Court’s authority (or, at least, that they’ve done so when the Trump administration asks them to prematurely get involved with a case).

The AFSCME case arises on the Court’s “shadow docket,” a mix of emergency motions and other matters that the Court decides on an unusually tight schedule, without full briefing or oral argument. Prior to the first Trump administration, the Court rarely granted requests for shadow docket relief — indeed, lawyers were so discouraged from seeking shadow docket decisions that both the Bush and Obama administrations only requested it about once every other year.

That changed once President Donald Trump took office. Now, Trump’s lawyers routinely approach the justices after a lower court issues a decision constraining its actions, and the justices frequently grant Trump’s administration the relief it seeks — often over the........

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