> And in Malliotakis, the Court reached out to block a state trial court ruling before the state supreme court had even had a chance to rule on the matter—for what appears to be the first time … ever.
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> But Malliotakis presents a bigger problem—the Supreme Court doesn’t even have jurisdiction to hear appeals from state courts until and unless the highest court in the state has ruled on the issue. As Justice Sotomayor pointed out in her dissent, “This procedural defect should be fatal. In every other case in which this Court has granted emergency relief from a state-court decision, the State’s highest court either denied it first or failed to act promptly on a request for it.”