The Supreme Court’s decision to temporarily allow mass layoffs at the Education Department marked the latest in a string of rulings from the high court green-lighting the president’s plans to scale down the size of the federal workforce.
Permitting the termination of about 1,400 Education Department employees is one of several instances of the Supreme Court showing significant deference to Trump’s power over the executive branch. In other cases, the high court has preliminarily approved of Trump’s executive order calling for sweeping federal job cuts and shown an openness to the president diminishing the independence of some agencies.
Often these decisions, issued on an emergency basis at the request of the Trump administration, have come with little explanation. The high court did not, for example, spell out why it allowed Trump to carry out mass layoffs at the Education Department. But the move advances the president’s long-term efforts to dismantle the department, for now.
South Texas College law professor Joshua Blackman said the plaintiffs’ argument that Congress needs to approve such a drastic change to an agency did not appear persuasive to the high court.
‘I think they’re basically saying, ‘We don’t think this is trying to restructure the agency,’’ Blackman told Fox News Digital. ‘Justices Jackson and Sotomayor sort of made that point in the dissent, but I don’t think it’s resonating with the majority.’
Blackman noted that even though these shadow docket decisions are temporary while the lawsuits proceed in the lower courts, they have lasting power. Litigation can take two or three years, and employees who lose their jobs are likely not waiting around for that long to return to the government, he said.
He also said those employees are not ‘in theory, at least,’ suffering irreparable harm because ‘reinstatements with back pay is an option.’ Irreparable harm is a criterion judges consider before issuing emergency orders.
Another Trump-friendly ruling
Last week, the Supreme Court temporarily reversed Judge Susan Illston’s order blocking the administration from acting on Trump’s executive order to reduce the workforce.
‘The President has the authority to seek changes to executive branch agencies, but he must do so in lawful ways and, in the case of large-scale reorganizations, with the cooperation of the legislative branch,’ Illston, a Clinton-appointed judge based in California, wrote.
Trump signed an executive order after he took office announcing a sweeping ‘reduction in force’ initiative. To carry out Trump’s order, the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management sent a directive to the heads of government agencies in February to craft plans to eliminate jobs.
‘Agencies should focus on the maximum elimination of functions that are not statutorily mandated while driving the highest-quality, most efficient delivery of their statutorily required functions,’ the memo said.
A group of labor organizations and nonprofits sued, arguing a mass reorganization of government required congressional approval.
Last week, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 against them by pausing Illston’s injunction. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan sided with the conservative majority, which found that the executive order and memo are lawful. The majority noted that the decision is not a reflection of the justices’ opinions on agency-specific firings and that those should be examined as a separate matter.
Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor, told ‘Fox & Friends’ the high court was sending a ‘clear’ message about judicial overreach.
‘This is another shot across the bow to lower courts that they’ve got to knock this off,’ Turley said. ‘They’ve got to stop with these injunctions. This is six months of delay. It could’ve been much longer, and the court is signaling, ‘We’re going to be on you very quickly if you continue to do these types of orders.”
Pending layoffs
The decision empowered Secretary of State Marco Rubio to lay off more than 1,300 State Department workers.
Since Trump took office, tens of thousands of federal employees have accepted buyout offers from the administration or been let go. But many other layoffs are still wrapped up in lawsuits.
Some firing decisions remain pending because of district court judges’ orders. In some cases, the Trump administration has argued that the Supreme Court’s recent move to do away with universal injunctions is reason enough for those judges to reverse course.
In one lawsuit, Democratic-led states sued over Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr.’s move to terminate about 10,000 employees. Judge Melissa DuBose, a Biden appointee based in Rhode Island, sided with the states and blocked the terminations. The judge must now decide if her injunction is at odds with the Supreme Court’s new ruling on universal injunctions.
Humphrey’s Executor
The government downsizing coincides with the president’s controversial decision to fire several watchdogs and members of independent agencies without cause.
In May, the Supreme Court sided with Trump on two of the firings, fueling speculation that the high court is aiming to overturn a 90-year precedent set in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States.
That decision found that President Franklin D. Roosevelt could not fire a member of the Federal Trade Commission without a reason, such as neglect of job duties or malfeasance, because it conflicted with a law Congress passed that established the commission.
In Trump’s case, the Supreme Court temporarily approved two firings involving the heads of the National Labor Relations Board and Merit Systems Protection Board. The high court’s order was unsigned but indicated that the three liberal justices dissented.
‘Because the Constitution vests the executive power in the President… he may remove without cause executive officers who exercise that power on his behalf, subject to narrow exceptions recognized by our precedents,’ the order read.
The Supreme Court’s decision was a boon to Trump’s implementation of the unitary executive theory, a legal concept that emphasizes presidential control. However, the order included a cautionary note that the Supreme Court’s finding was cursory and that no final decisions had been made about independent boards.
Kagan tore into the majority for letting Trump move forward with the firings.
‘Not since the 1950s (or even before) has a President, without a legitimate reason, tried to remove an officer from a classic independent agency – a multi member, bipartisan commission exercising regulatory power whose governing statute contains a for-cause provision,’ Kagan wrote.
Other similar lawsuits, including one brought by two fired Democratic-appointed FTC commissioners, are still pending, and the Supreme Court has not yet weighed in on them.