Chief Justice John Roberts decided to temporarily stay a lower court ruling compelling the Internal Revenue Service to reveal former President Donald Trump's tax returns to a Democratic-led House committee.
The House Ways and Means Committee was supposed to get the tax returns later this week.
Roberts requested a response by November 10.
The "administrative stay" is just temporary and may not necessarily represent the eventual outcome of the dispute. It is a common tactic used as a deadline approaches in order to maintain the status quo and allow the justices more time to act.
In a recent rush of Trump-related emergency applications, the judge having authority over the lower courts opted to provide such interim respite.
For example, on October 26, Justice Elena Kagan ordered a stay temporarily restraining a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, assault for phone and text data of Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward.
On October 24, Justice Clarence Thomas halted an order forcing Republican Senator Lindsey Graham to testify before a Georgia grand jury.
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which issued the order in the Trump IRS lawsuit, is overseen by Roberts.
The congressional initiative has the potential to give the Democratic-led House with the most direct path to the long-desired tax information.
The committee's chairman, Massachusetts Democrat Richard Neal, first requested the tax returns from the IRS in 2019, and the IRS first refused to provide them over under the Trump administration. The lawsuit went slowly until 2021 when the Justice Department revised its legal stance and determined that the IRS was compelled to cooperate with the committee's request under the Biden administration. A Trump-appointed judge ruled in favor of the House late last year, and the US DC Circuit Court of Appeals has declined to overturn that decision, most recently declining to hear the case last week.
After a trip to the Supreme Court in 2020, a different legal dispute involving the House Oversight Committee's pursuit of Trump tax information from his then-accounting company ended in a deal earlier this year. Trump is pursuing the disagreement with the Ways and Means Committee to the Supreme Court, claiming that lower courts have violated the Mazars case from 2020.
"The Ways and Means Committee believe the law is on our side and will provide a timely response as asked," a spokeswoman for the committee said Tuesday. "Chairman Neal is looking forward to the Supreme Court's prompt consideration."