On August 13, 2026, Justice Elena Kagan denied Apple's application to pause district-court proceedings in Epic Games v. Apple. The day before, she had issued an administrative stay lasting until 5 p.m. EDT on August 13, according to the Supreme Court docket for No. 26A194. The ruling means Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will now decide what commission, if any, Apple may charge when users buy outside the App Store after tapping a link in an iOS app. The Supreme Court is separately reviewing the contempt finding itself.
What happened
Apple has charged zero commission on US link-outs since the contempt ruling. Its proposed replacement schedule is a 15% fee for standard apps, 10% for partner programs (Video Partner, News Partner, Mini Apps and subscription renewals), and 5% for Small Business Program apps, per MacDailyNews' account of the filing. The same report says Epic has about 60 days to respond, followed by more briefing and a hearing.
Two tracks now run in parallel. On the first, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the civil contempt finding on December 11, 2025. It also held that Apple "should be allowed to charge some fees on linked transactions," which "should be limited and tied to the costs of any services Apple provides." That is the rate-setting task now before the district court. Cravath is Epic's counsel, so treat that page as a party's summary of the opinion.
On the second track, the Supreme Court granted certiorari on June 30, 2026, limited to Question 1 of Apple's petition. Apple's merits brief was filed September 14, and Epic's is due November 13. Apple's petition frames the central issue as whether a court may hold a party in contempt for violating the "spirit" of an injunction that is silent on the conduct at issue.
The strongest case for the regulators and the courts
The case for aggressive intervention is serious. A platform that controls the only lawful distribution channel on a device can price access to its customers at whatever the market will bear. A link-out commission set high enough makes the alternative purchase route pointless. The district court found that Apple's earlier approach was designed to do exactly that, and the Ninth Circuit unanimously agreed that Apple had willfully violated the injunction. On this view, even a 15% fee on web purchases would simply rebuild the toll booth under another name. Epic told the Supreme Court in May that Apple's conduct had delayed restored competition by more than two years, as SCOTUSblog reported.
Where proportionality points
That argument proves less than it appears to. A zero-commission rule for all time would treat Apple's platform as a free public utility. Apple does perform real work in a link-out: it maintains the operating system, the review process, the security model and the developer tools that make an app worth linking from. A regime in which a developer can use all of that and pay nothing on its most valuable transactions invites free-riding. It would also push Apple to cut investment in the very features, such as payments security and fraud screening, that consumers value.
The Ninth Circuit's cost-tied standard is the right frame, and Apple's filing should be tested against it. The relevant question for the district court is empirical: what does it cost Apple to coordinate an external hand-off, and what portion of a flat percentage is cost recovery and what portion is rent? A percentage fee scales with the developer's revenue, while the cost of handing a user off to a website does not. That mismatch is the best argument against Apple's schedule. The tiering also needs scrutiny. A 5% rate for Small Business Program apps suggests Apple itself thinks lower rates are workable for some developers, and the filing must explain why a standard app's coordination costs should be three times higher.
The free-speech and innovation interests here are practical ones. Developers want to tell their own users, truthfully, that a better price exists elsewhere. Rules that make that statement commercially pointless suppress a communication as well as a transaction. But the remedy should come from a transparent, evidence-based rate-setting process in a court, with each side able to test the other's cost claims. A regulator could simply announce a number by fiat, and that would be the worse path.
Why the sequence matters
An awkward feature of this posture is that rate-setting proceeds while the legal foundation for contempt is under Supreme Court review. If the Court narrows contempt based on an injunction's "spirit," the sanctions that anchor the district court's remedial role may be reshaped. Apple argued that it should not be forced to litigate its commission rate "under an erroneous and prejudicial contempt label," as SCOTUSblog quoted. Kagan's denial of the stay, in both the May and August applications, treats that harm as insufficient to freeze the lower court.
That is defensible. Delay has costs of its own. Developers have operated for years under uncertainty, and a rate set on a full evidentiary record is useful whichever way the Supreme Court rules on contempt. Any number the district court sets will be subject to appeal, which limits the cost of getting it wrong.
What to watch
- Epic's response. The roughly 60-day window will show whether Epic contests the level of the fee, the tiering, or the idea of a percentage fee at all.
- Cost evidence. Whether Apple documents actual coordination costs, rather than defending its rates by reference to its general commission structure.
- The Supreme Court's framing. A ruling that requires injunctions to be explicit would affect far more than app stores, since it would constrain contempt enforcement in every case where a defendant complies narrowly with the text of an order.
The lesson for policymakers is a modest one. Platform power deserves a check, but the check should price real costs and leave room for investment. Apple has the burden of showing that its schedule reflects costs, and a zero fee is not the only alternative to its proposal.