The case of Richard B. Cheney, Vice President of the United States, et al. v. United States District Court for the District of Columbia et al., 2003 revolved around a dispute over executive privilege and public access to information about Vice President Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force meetings in 2001. The plaintiffs argued that they had a right to know who attended these meetings under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), which requires disclosure when non-governmental employees are involved in policy making processes. However, Cheney and other defendants claimed that this violated their rights to confidential communication within the executive branch. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Cheney by a vote of 7-2, stating that there was not enough evidence presented by lower courts demonstrating FACA applied here or how it would violate separation-of-powers principles if it did apply; thus remanding back down for further proceedings without yet deciding on merits regarding potential constitutional issues raised by applying FACA here.

In the dissenting opinion for Cheney v. United States District Court, Justice Ginsburg disagreed with the majority's decision to grant a writ of mandamus in favor of Vice President Cheney and other officials. She argued that this extraordinary remedy was not warranted because there were still lower court proceedings available to address their concerns about executive privilege and separation of powers. Furthermore, she believed that the Supreme Court should have deferred more to the judgment of the district court judge who had been managing this complex case from its inception. In her view, by intervening prematurely, they undermined judicial efficiency and risked creating an unworkable standard for future cases involving claims of executive privilege.