The Supreme Court allowed President Donald Trump to move forward with plans to reduce the federal workforce.
The majority lifted a lower court’s injunction that blocked implementation of Trump’s executive order directing agencies to prepare “large-scale reductions” in the workforce.
“Because the Government is likely to succeed on its argument that the Executive Order and Memorandum are lawful—and because the other factors bearing on whether to grant a stay are satisfied—we grant the application,” the Supreme Court’s order states.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson issued the sole dissent, calling the majority’s decision “hubristic and senseless.”
“I see no basis to conclude that the District Court erred—let alone clearly so—in finding that the President is attempting to fundamentally restructure the Federal Government,” she wrote.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that she agrees the President “cannot restructure federal agencies in a manner inconsistent with congressional mandates” but noted the executive order only directed agencies to create plans for reducing the workforce ““consistent with applicable law.”
“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,” she wrote.
The lower court’s injunction “brought to a halt numerous in-progress RIFs at more than a dozen federal agencies, sowing confusion about what RIF-related steps agencies may take and compelling the government to retain—at taxpayer expense—thousands of employees whose continuance in federal service the agencies deem not to be in the government and public interest,” the Trump administration argued in its application.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
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