The Supreme Court on Tuesday backed President Donald Trump’s effort to carry out mass firings and reorganizations at federal agencies, putting on hold a lower court order that had temporarily blocked the president from taking those steps without approval from Congress.
In an unsigned order, the high court said that lower courts had stopped the plans based on the administration’s general goals, rather than specific agency “reduction in force” efforts to drastically cut government employees. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a member of the court’s liberal wing, dissented.
The case stems from an executive order Trump signed in mid-February that kicked off the process of significantly reducing the size of federal agencies, an issue the president campaigned on last year. But federal departments are created by law and lower courts have repeatedly held that the White House can’t unilaterally wipe them out or leave them so short staffed that they cannot carry out their legal responsibilities.
“Because the government is likely to succeed on its argument that the executive order and memorandum are lawful … we grant the application,” the court wrote in its brief order. “We express no view on the legality of any agency RIF and reorganization plan produced or approved pursuant to the executive order and memorandum.”
The lawsuit was filed by more than a dozen unions, non-profits and local governments, who have billed it as the largest legal challenge to the Trump administration’s effort to downsize the federal workforce.
“In my view, this decision is not only truly unfortunate but also hubristic and senseless,” Jackson wrote in dissent. “Lower court judges have their fingers on the pulse of what is happening on the ground and are indisputably best positioned to determine the relevant facts – including those that underlie fair assessments of the merits, harms, and equities.”
Some of the proposed cuts include a reduction of some 10,000 positions at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, according to court records. The Treasury Department proposed reducing the number of Internal Revenue Service positions by 40%. The Department of Veterans Affairs planned to eliminate 80,000 jobs, according to the groups that sued, though on Monday it reduced that figure to 30,000.
The order covers major reductions at more than a dozen agencies, including the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, Labor, Treasury, State, Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a member of the court’s liberal wing, said she agreed with the decision, which she described as limited.
“I agree with Justice Jackson that the president cannot restructure federal agencies in a manner inconsistent with congressional mandates,” Sotomayor wrote. “Here, however, the relevant executive order directs agencies to plan reorganizations and reductions in force ‘consistent with applicable law.’”
A federal court in California previously blocked the administration from conducting deeper layoffs and the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals declined to intervene. The Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court in early June.
“Presidents may set policy priorities for the executive branch, and agency heads may implement them,” US District Judge Susan Illston, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, wrote in in May.
But, she wrote, “a president may not initiate large-scale executive branch reorganization without partnering with Congress.”
Writing for the majority in the appeals court decision, US Circuit Judge William Fletcher, another Clinton appointee, said that “the kind of reorganization contemplated by the order has long been subject to Congressional approval.”
This story has been updated with additional details.
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