SCOTUS lets Trump continue mass government layoffs for now

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned a lower court’s preliminary injunction stopping the Trump administration from continuing its large-scale layoffs and restructuring within the federal government. The justices issued no legal opinion on President Donald Trump’s reorganization and layoffs. Instead they chose only to acknowledge that the administration’s case arguments would likely succeed, according to the order.

Trump issued an executive order in February calling on all government agencies to reduce waste and insularity, which in turn triggered mass firings and major reorganization. The largest federal workers union, the American Federation of Government Employees, filed a lawsuit in late April, alongside nearly a dozen nonprofit groups and several local governments in California, Texas, and Illinois. Groups argued that while the president may set priorities for agency leaders, only Congress could assign duties that federal agencies must statutorily carry out.

A federal judge in California concurred and issued a preliminary injunction to stop the mass layoffs in late May. The high court’s latest order overturned that injunction, allowing the administration to move forward with its restructuring while litigation continued. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only justice on the nine-member panel to issue a dissenting opinion about the unsigned order.

What was Jackson’s dissent? Jackson alleged that the high court knew very little about how Trump’s orders are affecting everyday people, and described the court's stay as the wrong decision at the wrong moment. This court now somehow sees fit to release the president’s wrecking ball as the case has just barely entered court, she wrote.

Dig deeper: Read my report for more about the lower court order that temporarily stopped the mass layoffs.