The U.S. Supreme Court late on Aug. 12 temporarily paused further action in federal district court in California in Apple’s long-running App Store dispute with Epic Games.

Justice Elena Kagan granted a brief administrative stay that is set to expire at 5 p.m. on Aug. 13. An administrative stay puts a lower court ruling or proceeding on hold while a higher court takes time to consider an emergency application.

The stay, which was sought by Apple, gives the justices time to consider whether to halt further action by the district court while they review a civil contempt finding against the company.

U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of Oakland, California, previously found Apple in contempt in the “Fortnite” video game maker’s lawsuit challenging App Store fees.

After the Supreme Court on June 30 agreed to review that contempt finding, the judge declined to put the case on hold. That refusal forced Apple to begin justifying any commission it wants to charge on certain outside purchases, which prompted the company to file the emergency application seeking relief from the justices earlier on Aug. 12.

In its June 30 order, the Supreme Court agreed to take up Apple’s bid to avoid being found in contempt in the lawsuit now pending in the lower court. When it hears the case in its new term that begins in October, the nation’s highest court is expected to focus on the contempt issue and not revisit the merits of the lawsuit itself.

Apple has been involved in litigation with Epic for years.

Epic sued Apple in 2020 to reduce its control over transactions in applications based on its iOS operating system and over restrictions that affect how apps are distributed to consumers.

In September 2021, Gonzalez Rogers partly dismissed Epic’s lawsuit, ruling that the company failed to present sufficient evidence that Apple possessed unlawful monopoly power in what she described as the market for “digital mobile gaming transactions.”

The judge also held that year that Apple’s App Store rules violated California competition law and issued an injunction requiring the company to let developers embed links in their apps so users could make purchases through non-Apple payment methods.

Apple later permitted the links but introduced new conditions, such as a 27 percent commission on developers for purchases completed on outside payment systems within a week of a user clicking on a link, along with other restrictions.

Epic argued Apple’s commission and related rules violated the injunction. On April 30, 2025, Gonzalez Rogers found Apple in civil contempt.

Apple was in “willful violation” of her 2021 order and had acted “with the express intent to create new anticompetitive barriers which would, by design and in effect, maintain a valued revenue stream; a revenue stream previously found to be anticompetitive,” she said.

“That it thought this Court would tolerate such insubordination was a gross miscalculation. ... For this Court, there is no second bite at the apple,” the judge said.

Apple, which denies wrongdoing and says it is obeying court orders, petitioned the Supreme Court on May 21.

The company asked the justices to consider two issues: whether the injunction should apply to millions of developers when Epic is the only plaintiff, and whether Apple could properly be held in contempt for allegedly violating the “spirit” of an injunction it contends did not specifically forbid the conduct in question.

In December 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the contempt finding but said Apple could present new arguments in the district court about what commission it should be permitted to charge for digital goods purchased in apps distributed through the App Store but paid for through third-party payment systems.

On June 30, the Supreme Court granted review limited to the first question presented in Apple’s petition—the civil contempt standard. It declined to take up the other question involving the scope of the injunction.

Epic had urged the high court to reject the petition. In a brief, the company argued that after being found in contempt, Apple responded with what it called “evasion and defiance,” imposing a commission “set so high that Apple knew—and intended—that it would make steering financially infeasible.”

A steered transaction is a purchase of digital services that a user completes outside of Apple’s in-app payment, or IAP system, typically through an external website link provided in the app.

Epic’s brief also stated that the district court found that Apple “outright lied” about how it calculated its commission.

The Ninth Circuit held that the “prohibitive effect” of Apple’s commission—which guaranteed that “‘no rational developer would’ engage in steering—violated the text of the Injunction.”

The Supreme Court has not yet scheduled an oral argument in the main case.