The justice said that the call was a job reference for one of his former clerks and that the request to stay the president-elect’s sentencing did not come up.
Prosecutors have been ordered to respond to the president-elect’s request by Thursday morning, suggesting the court could rule before Friday’s scheduled sentencing.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly ducked Second Amendment challenges to the law. Starkly differing decisions from federal appeals courts last month may change that.
The briefs, filed a week before oral arguments, offered sharply differing accounts of China’s influence over the site and the role of the First Amendment.
The president-elect took no position on the app’s First Amendment challenge to the law, which sets a Jan. 19 deadline to sell or close the popular platform.