The Supreme Court on Tuesday said it will allow the Trump administration to proceed with large-scale reductions in staff at many federal government agencies as opponents continue to seek to block those efforts in lower-court proceedings.
The Supreme Court’s decision is not the last word on the legality of the cutbacks at individual agencies themselves, which are being challenged in a lawsuit filed by a group of unions representing government workers, as well as by a handful of U.S. cities and counties.
The high court is likely to consider that issue at a later date.
In its unsigned order, the Supreme Court said that the Trump administration was likely to succeed in its arguments that an executive order directing agencies to prepare for the job cuts was lawful.
But, the ruling added, “We express no view on the legality of any Agency [Reduction in Force] and Reorganization Plan produced or approved pursuant to the Executive Order and Memorandum.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only one of the court’s nine members to openly dissent from the ruling Tuesday, which stayed an injunction blocking the so-called reductions in force at 19 federal agencies that was issued in May by a federal district court judge in San Francisco.
“Today’s decision has dealt a serious blow to our democracy and puts services that the American people rely on in grave jeopardy,” the coalition that has sued to block the cuts said in a statement.
“This decision does not change the simple and clear fact that reorganizing government functions and laying off federal workers en masse haphazardly without any congressional approval is not allowed by our Constitution,” the coalition said.
Jackson, in her dissent, wrote, “In my view, this was the wrong decision at the wrong moment, especially given what little this Court knows about what is actually happening on the ground.”
“This case is about whether that action amounts to a structural overhaul that usurps Congress’s policymaking prerogatives — and it is hard to imagine deciding that question in any meaningful way after those changes have happened,” she wrote.
“Yet, for some reason, this Court sees fit to step in now and release the President’s wrecking ball at the outset of this litigation.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor separately wrote that she agreed with her fellow liberal Jackson that “the President cannot restructure federal agencies in a manner inconsistent with congressional mandates.”
But Sotomayor, who concurred with the majority ruling, noted, “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.”
“I join the Court’s stay because it leaves the District Court free to consider those questions in the first instance,” she wrote.
President Donald Trump in February issued an executive order directing federal agencies to “promptly undertake preparations to initiate large-scale reduction in force (RIFs), consistent with applicable law.”
U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer, who is representing the Trump administration, in a filing at the Supreme Court, wrote that Trump’s “order rested on firm legal footing and followed a long historical tradition.”
“For at least about 150 years, Congress has recognized the Executive Branch’s authority to carry out reductions in its workforce as the need arises, subject to statutory preferences for veteran status and other factors,” Sauer wrote.
But in her May 22 order blocking the reductions in force, District Court Judge Susan Illson wrote, “Presidents may set policy priorities for the executive branch, and agency heads may implement them. This much is undisputed.”
“But Congress creates federal agencies, funds them, and gives them duties that — by statute — they must carry out,” Illston added.
“Agencies may not conduct large-scale reorganizations and reductions in force in blatant disregard of Congress’s mandates, and a President may not initiate large-scale executive branch reorganization without partnering with Congress,” the judge wrote. “For this reason, nine Presidents over the last one hundred years have sought and obtained authority from Congress to reorganize the executive branch.
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