If you want to understand how the Supreme Court’s MAGA majority has undermined democracy, you need to understand the “shadow docket.”

The shadow docket — as the court’s emergency docket has come to be known — is one of the more dramatic and corrupt ways that MAGA-aligned justices are enabling President Trump to take away our freedoms.

Normally, the justices don’t hear a case until after lower courts have considered it fully and made a final decision. But a party to a case may describe it as so urgent that quick “relief” is needed from the Supreme Court, claiming that “irreparable harm” may occur while lower courts consider it.

That puts it on the emergency docket.

Since time is supposedly of the essence, the justices don’t hold oral arguments. And if they grant the “relief” and undo the lower court’s order, they often give us little if any explanation why. Lower court judges are left without much guidance on whether or how to use the decision to guide their own decisions.

With so little sunlight, no wonder the term “shadow docket” has stuck.

But too often, the “emergency” is simply that Trump isn’t getting his way — often on matters where lower courts have considered his actions plainly unlawful. Yet the current majority frequently rules in his favor.

For instance, several victims sued when Trump sent masked agents to wage a campaign of terror against Latinos in California, picking their targets by racial profiling. A judge barred the blatantly illegal practice while litigation was pending.

But the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court for emergency “relief” from the judge’s order. And the corrupt majority gave it to them, with no explanation. So while consideration of the case proceeds in the lower courts, so does the racial profiling.

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that she could not remain silent “while our constitutional freedoms are lost” through a “grave misuse of our emergency docket.”

Since Trump came back to office, this pattern has played out repeatedly. Lower court judges are holding Trump accountable to the law. But their work is undone by the conservative justices, often with little explanation.

They let Trump disappear people to foreign countries for imprisonment and torture, triggering Justice Sotomayor’s criticism that the majority was effectively “rewarding lawlessness” even though “thousands [could] suffer violence” as a result.

They let DOGE access our sensitive Social Security data, as Justice Elena Kagan dissented, “without any showing by the Government that it will actually suffer concrete or irreparable harm from having to comply” with the lower court injunction.

They let Trump illegally fire members of independent agencies like the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the National Labor Relations Board, a decision Kagan said was made with “little time, scant briefing, and no argument.”

They let the Trump administration terminate almost $800 million in crucial medical research grants from the National Institutes of Health, leading Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to say that the only law the majority seemed to follow was “the administration always wins.”

This is causing a crisis throughout the federal judiciary. Dozens of federal judges, nominated by both Democratic and Republican presidents, have condemned these shadow docket rulings as confusing for them and harmful to the judiciary.

Congress needs to hear from us that this has gone too far. It should require the justices to explain their reasoning in emergency docket orders.

Congress can make clear that the temporary inability of the administration to carry out its desired policy is not a sufficient “harm” to justify premature interference by the Supreme Court. Lawmakers could also require the Court to consider the harm to the administration’s targets.

But ultimately, the best solution is long-term. We can take an active role in Supreme Court confirmation fights. And we can push Congress to reform the Court as an institution. It is in our power to create a Supreme Court majority that respects our freedom and the rule of law.

Paul Gordon is People For the American Way’s senior legislative counsel. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.