The Supreme Court issued an order Monday allowing the Education Department to lay off hundreds of employees, staying a lower court’s pause of the Trump administration’s plans.
The high court issued the 6-3 order in an unsigned opinion, which allows the layoffs to proceed as the legal battle makes its way through the courts. The majority did not elaborate on its decision. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a lengthy dissent to the order, which was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Sotomayor accused the Trump administration of attempting to unilaterally “eliminate a Cabinet-level agency established by Congress” with the layoffs, arguing that Congress has the power to abolish a Cabinet-level department, rather than the president.
“When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it,” Sotomayor wrote, calling the decision to lift the preliminary injunction “indefensible.”
“It hands the Executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out,” Sotomayor wrote. “The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naive, but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave. Unable to join in this misuse of our emergency docket, I respectfully dissent.”
The executive order at the center of the legal battle, issued in March, would reduce the Education Department’s workforce by roughly 1,400 positions, with Trump saying the order would effectively gut the department. A judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts paused Trump’s order, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit denied a request to stay the lower court’s order.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer petitioned the Supreme Court last month, requesting a stay of the lower court’s preliminary injunction, accusing the district court of trying to thwart “the Executive Branch’s authority to manage the Department of Education despite lacking jurisdiction to second-guess the Executive’s internal management decisions.”
Sauer also claimed in his petition to the justices that the Trump administration understands it is required to “retain sufficient staff to continue fulfilling statutorily mandated functions” and has kept those employees at the department with the executive order.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon celebrated the decision in a statement Monday, claiming the “Supreme Court again confirmed the obvious: the President of the United States, as the head of the Executive Branch, has the ultimate authority to make decisions about staffing levels, administrative organization, and day-to-day operations of federal agencies.”
SUPREME COURT ALLOWS TRUMP PLAN TO CUT FEDERAL WORKFORCE
“The U.S. Department of Education will now deliver on its mandate to restore excellence in American education,” McMahon added. “We will carry out the reduction in force to promote efficiency and accountability and to ensure resources are directed where they matter most – to students, parents, and teachers. As we return education to the states, this Administration will continue to perform all statutory duties while empowering families and teachers by reducing education bureaucracy.”
The Supreme Court order comes less than a week after the high court allowed the Trump administration to move forward with its reduction-in-force plans across various federal agencies.