Epic asks Supreme Court to leave Apple’s App Store contempt ruling in place

Epic Games has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reject Apple’s bid for review in the long-running App Store fight over payment routing. For high-risk PSPs, the interesting part is not the courtroom drama itself, but the continued pressure on Apple’s ability to block or steer in-app payments toward its own rails.

1. Epic’s filing says there is no reason for the Supreme Court to step in, and that the lower courts handled the dispute properly. In other words, Epic wants the contempt finding against Apple to stand without another round of appellate intervention.
2. The dispute centers on a California federal court order that barred Apple from enforcing policies preventing app developers from directing users to alternative payment methods outside Apple’s ecosystem. Apple was later found in contempt after the court concluded it had not complied with that injunction.
3. Apple is asking the Supreme Court to review the case, arguing that the lower courts made significant legal errors. Per AppleInsider, Apple says the anti-steering injunction reaches beyond the scope of the original case and regulates conduct that was not directly at issue during the litigation.
4. Apple is also challenging the contempt reasoning itself. According to AppleInsider, it argues courts should judge compliance based on the actual language of an injunction, not whether a company allegedly violated the broader intent or “spirit” of the order.
5. Epic’s position is simpler: the company says Apple’s appeal does not raise issues important enough to justify Supreme Court review, and it wants the lower court decision left intact.

For payment providers serving app-based merchants, the practical signal is clear: app-store payment policy remains a live legal battleground, and the question of whether developers can steer users to outside payment methods is still being litigated rather than settled.