The Trump administration asked Justice Elena Kagan for an administrative stay of a lower court decision pausing President Trump’s massive government reorganization.
Win McNamee/Getty Images and Erin Schaff/Pool/AFP via Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Win McNamee/Getty Images and Erin Schaff/Pool/AFP via Getty Images
The Supreme Court on Tuesday lifted a lower court order that had blocked President Trump’s executive order requiring government agencies to lay off hundreds of thousands of federal employees.
The order was unsigned. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was appointed to the court by President Biden, dissented. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a fellow liberal, concurred with the court’s decision. The order did not make clear how the other justices voted.
In February, Trump detailed an extensive plan instructing agency heads to prepare for “large-scale reductions in force,” known as RIFs.
Later that month, the administration issued an accompanying memorandum alleging that the federal government is “costly, inefficient and deeply in debt,” and blaming that inefficiency on “unproductive and unnecessary programs that benefit radical interest groups.” The memo required agency heads to submit initial layoff plans to the Office of Management and Budget and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management two weeks later.
The executive order and memorandum included explicit tools for staff reduction including a general standard that no more than one employee should be hired for every four employees that depart, removing underperforming employees, and allowing term or temporary positions to expire without renewal.
Groups challenging the layoffs in court contend that the RIFs could result in “hundreds of thousands of federal employees los[ing] their jobs.” They argued that without the temporary restraint “there w[ould] be no way to unscramble the egg” if they eventually won the larger case in the lower court. They contended that without the temporary block to the federal layoffs, “critical government services would be lost … there [would] be no way to go back in time to restore those agencies, functions, and services.”
Labor unions, advocacy groups and local governments sued the president and 21 federal agencies over the RIFs, contending that the president exceeded his authority in mandating the federal layoffs. They argued that the president avoided the congressional approval needed to restructure federal agencies.
During his first term, Trump sought congressional approval to mandate similar layoffs. But, Congress rejected his plan. This time Trump didn’t bother going to Congress, and objectors sued, arguing that to implement the RIF plan legally, the administration should have sought congressional approval or “cooperate[d] with Congress through the regular legislative or budgetary process.”
The administration contends that the president has the authority to conduct mass layoffs on his own. As the executive, they argue, “the President does not need additional statutory authorization to direct agencies to conduct RIFs to further reorganizations.”
U.S. District Judge Susan Illston, a federal district court judge in California, has made a decision to temporarily block the administration from enforcing mass agency-wide layoffs while lower court proceedings continue. This decision has halted the government’s largest agencies from issuing new reorganization plans and layoff notices. It has also prevented agencies from separating those who have already received layoff notices and are currently on administrative leave.
Illston, who was appointed by President Clinton, also blocked a subsequent memo from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) that instructed agencies on how to implement President Trump’s executive order. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has supported the lower court’s decision, stating that the temporary order does not overly burden the administration’s actions.
The Trump administration has sought to overturn the lower court order, arguing that universal injunctions, which stop government actions nationwide, are improper. The administration has previously challenged such injunctions in cases involving Trump’s executive orders. The Supreme Court has often sided with the administration in these cases, allowing Trump to proceed with his plans for mass federal layoffs.
This ongoing legal battle highlights the tension between the administration’s executive orders and the authority of the federal judiciary. The outcome of these cases will have significant implications for the implementation of government policies and the separation of powers in the United States.
