Conkright v. Frommert
Justice Ginsburg, acting alone as the justice overseeing emergency requests from that part of the country, refused to pause a federal appeals court ruling against the administrators of Xerox's pension plan, even after the Supreme Court asked the government for its views on the case.
The administrators wanted to avoid paying pension benefits to beneficiaries while they sought Supreme Court review, but Ginsburg found they had not shown they would suffer harm that money could not later fix.
“Denial of such in-chambers stay applications is the norm; relief is granted only in “extraordinary cases.””
Ginsburg explains how rarely a single justice will pause a lower court's ruling.
How it got here: The Second Circuit ruled against the pension plan administrators; they asked the Supreme Court's Circuit Justice to stay that ruling while pursuing a certiorari petition, after an earlier stay request had already been denied.
The Case in Depth
What happened
The administrators of Xerox Corporation's pension plan lost a case in the Second Circuit over how they calculated benefits for plan participants. Rather than pay out immediately, the administrators asked the Supreme Court to pause the appeals court's mandate while they sought further review, arguing that paying beneficiaries now could mean money they might never get back if they ultimately won.
The question before the Court
Should the Supreme Court pause a lower court's order requiring a pension plan's administrators to keep paying disputed benefits while they asked the Court to review the case?
The Court's answer
No — Justice Ginsburg, acting as Circuit Justice, refused to pause the Second Circuit's ruling requiring the Xerox pension plan's administrators to pay disputed benefits while they sought Supreme Court review. She explained that the Court's request for the Solicitor General's views on the case made a grant of review only somewhat more likely, but did not by itself satisfy the demanding standard for a stay.
She also found the administrators had not shown irreparable harm, since they didn't establish that money paid to beneficiaries now could never be recovered later or that the payments would threaten the plan's solvency. Without both a strong likelihood of success and irreparable harm, a stay was not warranted, so the lower court's judgment stayed in effect.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Pension plan beneficiaries covered by the underlying dispute will keep receiving the payments the lower court ordered while the administrators pursue Supreme Court review. The decision also illustrates how hard it is to get a single justice to block a lower-court ruling before the full Court decides whether to hear a case at all.
What changes now
The Second Circuit's mandate remains in effect, so the pension plan's administrators must continue making the disputed payments to beneficiaries while the Supreme Court decides whether to take up their petition for review. This order does not resolve the underlying dispute over how benefits were calculated; it only addresses whether payments could be paused in the meantime.
What this does not decide
This order does not decide whether the Second Circuit's ruling on how the pension benefits should be calculated was correct, and it does not decide whether the Supreme Court will agree to hear the case. It addresses only whether payments could be paused in the interim.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- A single justice acting on emergency applications like this one applies a settled standard: relief is granted only in extraordinary cases, and the applicant must show a reasonable probability that four Justices would vote to hear the case.
- The applicant must also show a fair prospect that a majority of the Court would find the lower court's decision wrong, and that irreparable harm — harm money cannot later fix — would result without a pause.
- In close cases, the justice may also weigh the relative harms to each side and the public interest, a step sometimes called balancing the equities.
- The plan administrators argued that the Court's request for the federal government's views on their petition — a step taken in only a small share of cases — showed a reasonable probability of four votes to hear the case.
- The justice accepted that the government's-views request was relevant but noted such petitions are still denied more often than granted, so it did not by itself satisfy the standard.
- Because the administrators could not show that paying beneficiaries now would be impossible to recoup later or would jeopardize the pension plan itself, the irreparable-harm requirement was not met, so the pause was denied.