Supreme Court allows Donald Trump to resume mass federal layoffs
The court's decision is the second time in recent months it has sided with Donald Trump's plan to slash the federal workforce
The Supreme Court lifted a court order Tuesday that had blocked 19 federal agencies and departments from dramatically reducing their workforces, allowing Donald Trump to move forward with his plans to continue slashing the size of the federal government.
The executive order, originally announced by Trump on February 11, could cost hundreds of thousands of federal workers their job, opponents say.
In her dissent, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown wrote that a California judge's "temporary, practical, harm-reducing preservation of the status quo was no match for this court’s demonstrated enthusiasm for greenlighting this president’s legally dubious actions in an emergency posture."
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The court wrote in an unsigned order that the Trump administration is likely to succeed in its argument that the president's February executive order and a joint memo from the Office of Management and Budget and Office of Personnel Management were lawful. Whether or not individual agency's plans on how to execute the downsizing would pass legal muster is yet to be seen, according to the justices.
The affected agencies will include the Health and Human Services Department, Internal Revenue Service, Veterans Affairs Department, Labor Department, Energy Department and Environmental Protection Agency, according to Bloomberg Law. The cuts will follow the tens of thousands of federal workers who were forced to leave their jobs earlier this year due to heavy downsizing spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, some of whom have since been rehired.
Despite the Trump administration's recent backtracking on some of its efforts to shrink the federal workforce, some experts warn that its hasty rehirings are a sign that it did away with essential capacities and expertise that were difficult to replace.
This weekend, the administration came under fire in the wake of deadly flooding in portions of central and southern Texas as some blamed staffing cuts to NOAA and the NWS for allegedly delayed and inaccurate warnings issued to area residents that resulted in dozens of deaths.
The Supreme Court's decision this week is the second time the court has backed Trump in a mass firing case. On April 8, its decision allowed the administration not to reinstate employees that were removed from six government departments.
US District Judge Susan Illston had temporarily blocked the reductions in force during the latest case, saying they would withhold many federal agencies from its ability to perform the tasks mandated by Congress.
"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 wrote in a preliminary injunction.
A group of advocacy organizations, local governments and labor unions had challenged the initial executive order with a lawsuit, saying it was vital that the downsizing plan was halted while the courts determined its legality.
“If the courts ultimately deem the president to have overstepped his authority and intruded upon that of Congress, as a practical matter there will be no way to go back in time to restore those agencies, functions, and services,” they argued.
