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The Supreme Court on Tuesday backed President Donald Trump’s effort to carry out mass firings and reorganizations at federal agencies, putting on hold a lower court order that had temporarily blocked the president from taking those steps without approval from Congress.
The decision is the latest in a series of significant wins for Trump at the Supreme Court, including an opinion making it more difficult to challenge executive orders and rulings backing the administration’s deportation policies.
In an unsigned order, the high court said that lower courts had stopped the plans based on the administration’s general effort, rather than specific agency “reduction in force” plans that would drastically cut the size of the government workforce.
No vote count was released, but Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a member of the court’s liberal wing, dissented.
The case stems from an executive order Trump signed in mid-February that kicked off the process of significantly reducing the size of federal agencies, an issue the president campaigned on last year. Departments subsequently announced plans to lay off tens of thousands of employees.
But federal departments are created by law and lower courts have repeatedly held that the White House can’t unilaterally wipe them out or leave them so short staffed that they cannot carry out their legal responsibilities.
“Because the government is likely to succeed on its argument that the executive order and memorandum are lawful … we grant the application,” the court wrote in its brief order. “We express no view on the legality of any agency RIF and reorganization plan produced or approved pursuant to the executive order and memorandum.”
In other words, the court left open the possibility that it could rule against a specific plan in the future if the reductions appeared to make it impossible for an agency to carry out its obligation under the law.
The lawsuit was filed by a coalition of more than a dozen unions, non-profits and local governments, who have billed it as the largest legal challenge to the Trump administration’s effort to downsize the federal workforce.
“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 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 it will continue to “argue this case to protect critical public services that we rely on to stay safe and healthy.”
The White House said the Supreme Court ruling is “another definitive victory for the President and his administration.”
“It clearly rebukes the continued assaults on the president’s constitutionally authorized executive powers by leftist judges who are trying to prevent the president from achieving government efficiency across the federal government,” White House spokesman Harrison Fields said in a statement to CNN.
Jackson: Ruling is ‘hubristic and senseless’
“In my view, this decision is not only truly unfortunate but also hubristic and senseless,” Jackson wrote in her dissent. “Lower court judges have their fingers on the pulse of what is happening on the ground and are indisputably best positioned to determine the relevant facts – including those that underlie fair assessments of the merits, harms, and equities.”
At bottom, Jackson wrote, the case was about whether the administration’s effort “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.”
“Yet, for some reason,” she added, “this court sees fit to step in now and release the president’s wrecking ball at the outset of this litigation.”
The order covers major reductions at more than a dozen agencies, including the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, Labor, Treasury, State, Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Some of the proposed cuts include a reduction of some 10,000 positions at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, according to court records. The Treasury Department proposed reducing the number of Internal Revenue Service positions by 40%. The Department of Veterans Affairs planned to eliminate 80,000 jobs, according to the groups that sued, though on Monday the VA reduced that figure to 30,000, which it said will be accomplished mainly through a hiring freeze, deferred resignations, retirements and normal attrition.
The heads of some agencies have said that they were holding off on their reorganizations and reductions because of the district court order. CNN has reached out to several departments about their plans to proceed.
“HHS previously announced our plans to transform this department to Make America Healthy Again and we intend to do just that,” HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said in an email to CNN.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a member of the court’s liberal wing, said she agreed with the decision, which she described as limited.
“I agree with Justice Jackson that the president cannot restructure federal agencies in a manner inconsistent with congressional mandates,” Sotomayor wrote. “Here, however, the relevant executive order directs agencies to plan reorganizations and reductions in force ‘consistent with applicable law.’”
A federal court in California previously blocked the administration from conducting deeper layoffs and the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals declined to intervene. The Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court in early June.
“Presidents may set policy priorities for the executive branch, and agency heads may implement them,” US District Judge Susan Illston, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, wrote in in May.
But, she wrote, “a president may not initiate large-scale executive branch reorganization without partnering with Congress.”
Writing for the majority in the appeals court decision, US Circuit Judge William Fletcher, another Clinton appointee, said that “the kind of reorganization contemplated by the order has long been subject to Congressional approval.”
This story has been updated with additional details.
