On Thursday, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson brought her public criticism of the court’s emergency docket into sharp alignment with her conduct on the bench. The Biden appointee again declined to give the Trump administration the instant judicial relief it wanted.

Jackson has publicly criticized her colleagues over their use of the shadow docket. Through that emergency process, the court’s majority appointed by Republicans has repeatedly allowed the administration to move ahead with policies that lower courts had blocked.

Her public remarks and judicial action converged as she spoke against the court’s accelerated emergency decisions while withholding immediate relief in the administration’s latest urgent application. The episode offered another clear example of Jackson refusing to simply defer to the White House.

Speaking at a law school in Washington, Jackson reportedly described her “serious concern” about the high court’s treatment of its emergency docket. She warned that the practice is “having an enormously disruptive and potentially corrosive effect” on the broader court system.

That same day, the administration’s latest request for swift relief involving deportation powers landed before Jackson. The application went to her because justices are assigned to handle emergency motions arising from different geographical regions within the nation’s lower courts.

Jackson is assigned to the Northeastern circuit, where courts have been ruling against the administration on the immigration issue. That assignment, rather than any preference from the administration, placed the application before a justice whose skepticism was already well established.

The administration has frequently sought emergency relief from the Supreme Court. Such applications can request a “stay” that pauses a lower court action, along with an immediate “administrative stay” that blocks the action while the justices consider whether to grant a longer pause.

This application, submitted by Solicitor General John Sauer, included an unusual request. If Jackson was not inclined to grant an immediate administrative stay, the administration said she should refer that preliminary request to the full court.

The request appeared to anticipate that Jackson would resist granting provisional relief while the court considered the administration’s broader application. In effect, the government sought a route around Jackson and toward the full court, where it believed its prospects would be better.

Justices commonly refer major requests for longer stays to the full court. What stood out here was the administration asking Jackson to take that step at the earlier stage involving an administrative stay, rather than waiting for consideration of the longer request.

The administration’s expectation of Jackson’s skepticism appeared accurate. The next docket entry on Thursday showed Jackson directing the immigrants’ lawyers to respond to the application by 4 p.m. ET on Monday rather than immediately granting the requested administrative stay.

That decision did not resolve the full application, and it remains unclear what discussions may have occurred between Jackson and her colleagues. Still, the administration did not receive the immediate intervention it had specifically requested.

The administration could ultimately prevail if Jackson refers the question of a longer stay to the full court after the immigrants’ response arrives. Even if she independently denies that longer relief, the administration may present its application to another justice in an effort to place the dispute before the full bench.

For the moment, however, Jackson refused to deliver precisely what the administration wanted on its preferred schedule. The justices are set to return to the bench on the first Monday in October for the beginning of their next term.

Jackson’s resistance continued Friday in an unrelated emergency ruling. She led the justices appointed by Democrats in dissent and argued that the majority “misuses its equitable powers” by allowing the administration to use a citizenship database ahead of the midterms.