The US Supreme Court has paved the way for the Trump administration to move forward with plans for significant job cuts and aspects of its campaign to minimize and reform the federal government.
The justices overturned a ruling from San Francisco-based US District Judge Susan Illston on May 22, which had prevented large-scale federal layoffs, termed “reductions in force,” that could potentially impact hundreds of thousands of jobs while litigation in the case is ongoing.
In February, US President Donald Trump announced a “critical transformation of the federal bureaucracy” through an executive order that instructed agencies to prepare for an overhaul of the government aimed at significantly slashing the federal workforce and dismantling offices that the administration opposes.
Plans for workforce reductions were set to take place at the US Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Health and Human Services, State, Treasury, Veterans Affairs, and over a dozen other agencies.
Recently, the US Supreme Court has sided with Mr. Trump in several significant cases.
The court indicated that it was not ruling on the legality of any specific layoff plans at federal agencies.
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only member of the nine-person court to openly dissent from this decision.
Justice Jackson expressed that Judge Illston’s “temporary, practical, harm-reducing preservation of the status quo was no match for this court’s apparent enthusiasm for endorsing this president’s legally questionable actions in an emergency context.”
Judge Illston stated in her ruling that Mr. Trump had overstepped his authority in ordering the downsizing, aligning with a coalition of unions, non-profits, and local governments challenging the administration’s actions.
“As history shows, the president can broadly restructure federal agencies only when authorized by Congress,” she wrote.
Elon Musk assisted Mr. Trump in reducing the federal workforce.
The judge prohibited agencies from conducting mass layoffs and restricted their capacity to cut or restructure federal programs.
She also ordered the reinstatement of employees who had been let go, although she delayed implementing this aspect of her ruling during the appeals process.
Justice Illston’s ruling was the most comprehensive of its type against the governmental restructuring being pursued by Mr. Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a central entity in the Republican president’s push to reduce the federal workforce.
Once led by billionaire Elon Musk, DOGE aimed to eliminate federal jobs, streamline the US government, and eliminate what they perceive as wasteful spending.
Mr. Musk officially ended his role in the government on May 30 and subsequently experienced a public fallout with Mr. Trump.
‘Supervisory powers’
The San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 ruling on May 30, denied the Trump administration’s request to stay Judge Illston’s decision.
The 9th Circuit stated that the administration had not demonstrated it would incur irreparable damage if the judge’s order remained, and the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in their lawsuit.
“The executive order at issue here far exceeds the president’s supervisory powers under the Constitution,” the 9th Circuit remarked.
It described the Trump administration’s actions as “an unprecedented attempted restructuring of the federal government and its operations.”
The ruling prompted the US Justice Department to urgently request the Supreme Court to suspend Judge Illston’s order.
Managing the personnel of federal agencies “lies at the heartland” of presidential executive authority, the Justice Department argued in its filing to the Supreme Court.
Justice Brown Jackson indicated that the court has ‘greenlit’ Mr. Trump’s ‘legally questionable actions.’
“The Constitution does not impose a presumption against presidential control of agency staffing, and the president does not require explicit permission from Congress to exercise core Article II powers,” the filing stated, referencing the section of the Constitution defining presidential authority.
The plaintiffs urged the Supreme Court to reject the Justice Department’s request.
Permitting the Trump administration to proceed with its “breakneck reorganization,” they contended, would mean that “programs, offices, and functions across the federal government will be abolished, agencies will undergo radical downsizing beyond what Congress authorized, critical government services will be lost, and hundreds of thousands of federal employees will lose their jobs.”
In recent months, the Supreme Court has sided with Mr. Trump in several major cases that were addressed on an emergency basis upon his return to office in January.
It enabled Mr. Trump’s administration to resume deporting migrants to countries other than their own without giving them an opportunity to demonstrate the dangers they might face.
In two separate cases, it permitted the administration to terminate temporary legal status previously granted on humanitarian grounds to hundreds of thousands of migrants.
It also allowed Mr. Trump to implement his ban on transgender individuals serving in the US military, overturned a judge’s order requiring the administration to rehire thousands of dismissed employees, and twice ruled in favor of DOGE.
Moreover, the court limited the authority of federal judges to issue nationwide rulings that could obstruct presidential policies.
