Pexels
The Supreme Court cleared the way July 8 for the Trump administration to move forward with its sweeping plan to downsize the federal workforce, lifting an injunction a lower court had issued in May that had halted layoffs and agency restructuring efforts.
The unsigned decision allows the implementation of President Donald Trump’s February executive order, which instructs federal agencies to root out what Trump called “waste, bloat, and insularity” within the bureaucracy.
According to Reuters, the administration planned to cut personnel at the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Health and Human Services, State, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs. The court’s decision allows those efforts to proceed immediately, even as legal battles over their implementation continue.
Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the sole public dissenter, condemning the court’s intervention as “hubristic and senseless.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who often aligns with Jackson in dissenting, joined the majority. In a concurring opinion, she emphasized that the ruling does not settle whether the layoffs themselves are lawful.
“The plans themselves are not before this Court, at this stage, and we thus have no occasion to consider whether they can and will be carried out consistent with the constraints of law,” Sotomayor wrote. “I join the Court’s stay because it leaves the District Court free to consider those questions in the first instance.”
The ruling overturns a May 22 decision by US District Judge Susan Illston, who sided with labor unions and local governments in blocking Trump’s order. Illston argued that Trump had likely overstepped his constitutional authority. The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals on May 30 upheld Illston’s injunction, prompting the Justice Department to file an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court June 2.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer warned that the injunction blocked agencies from pursuing necessary reforms.
“Agencies are being prevented (and have been since the district court issued its temporary restraining order a month ago) from taking needed steps to make the federal government and workforce more efficient,” he wrote in the appeal.
The ruling marks another Supreme Court victory for Trump on the scope of presidential authority. In May, the court upheld Trump’s policy barring “transgender” individuals from military service. Last month, the justices reined in the use of nationwide injunctions — a tool the administration has criticized as overused by “activist judges.”
