Supreme Court denies Apple stay

App Store control is back in the spotlight — not because of a new product, but because Apple just lost a key procedural fight. On May 6, Justice Elena Kagan denied Apple’s request to keep a lower-court mandate on hold in the Epic Games case. That sounds narrow, but the stakes are simple: Apple is running out of ways to delay court-ordered limits on how it controls app payments and links. ### What did the Supreme Court actually do? It did not decide the whole Apple-Epic case. It denied Apple’s emergency application for a stay after the Ninth Circuit had already reversed its own earlier pause and said the mandate should issue. In plain English, Apple asked for more time before the lower-court ruling took effect while it prepared a Supreme Court appeal. Kagan said no. (supremecourt.gov) ### Why was Apple asking for a stay? Because the underlying order is painful for Apple. The case goes back to the 2021 injunction that barred Apple from stopping developers from steering users to outside payment options. In April 2025, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers found Apple had not complied, enforced the injunction, and referred the matter for possible criminal contempt review. Apple has been trying to narrow, pause, or overturn that outcome ever since. (supremecourt.gov) ### Why does “anti-steering” matter so much? Because this is really about who controls the checkout. If a developer can tell an iPhone user, “tap here and pay on the web,” Apple loses leverage over in-app purchases and the fees tied to them. Epic’s fight has always been bigger than Fortnite — it is about whether Apple can use App Store rules to keep transactions inside Apple’s system even when a court has told it not to block outside paths. (supremecourt.gov) ### So is this finished now? Not quite. Apple can still seek Supreme Court review of the Ninth Circuit decision. But the catch is that emergency delay tactics are getting weaker. The May 6 denial does not settle the merits, yet it leaves Apple with less room to freeze the consequences while the larger appeal effort plays out. That shifts leverage toward Epic in the near term. (supremecourt.gov) ### Where does Rave fit into this? Rave is a separate fight, but it hits the same nerve — Apple’s power over access to iPhone users. Rave, an Ontario company whose app lets people watch video together across platforms, said on May 7 that it sued Apple in the U.S. and four other countries after Apple removed Rave from the App Store in 2025. Rave says Apple’s move protected SharePlay, Apple’s own co-viewing feature. (supremecourt.gov) ### What is Rave asking for? Reinstatement to the App Store and “hundreds of millions of dollars” in damages. Rave says it has more than 225 million downloads and argues Apple’s removal cut off iPhone and Mac users while leaving the service available on Android and Windows. Apple has not publicly laid out a full response in the materials surfaced here, so that part of the dispute is still one-sided for now. (money.usnews.com) ### Why do these two cases belong together? Because they attack two different choke points. Epic challenges Apple’s control over payments after an app is approved. Rave challenges Apple’s power to decide whether a competing app gets to exist on iOS at all. Put those together and you get the real pressure on Apple’s model — not just commission rates, but the broader idea that one company can govern discovery, distribution, and checkout in the same ecosystem. (money.usnews.com) ### Bottom line The May 6 Supreme Court denial was not flashy, but it mattered. Apple failed to win more breathing room in its longest-running App Store court fight, and a fresh lawsuit is now testing its platform power from another angle. Basically, the legal argument over iPhone economics just got less theoretical and more immediate. (supremecourt.gov 1) (supremecourt.gov 2)