Supreme Court Lets Trump Continue Education Department Layoffs

A sharply divided US Supreme Court let President Donald Trump resume dismantling the Department of Education, lifting a lower court order that required the reinstatement of as many as 1,400 workers.

Granting an emergency request from the administration Monday, the court’s conservative majority put on hold a ruling that said the Trump purge would leave the department unable to perform duties required under US law. The Supreme Court order, which came with no explanation, will apply while the case continues on appeal.

The court’s three liberals dissented. Writing for the group, Justice Sonia Sotomayor blasted the decision as “indefensible” and said it gave the president “the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out.”

“The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naive, but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave,” said Sotomayor, who was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The ruling reinforces the Supreme Court’s decision last week to let Trump broadly move ahead with a push to dramatically reduce the size of the federal workforce. The July 8 decision didn’t address the lawfulness of individual agency plans, and the latest ruling could boost the administration as it defends against legal challenges to those actions.

“Today, the Supreme Court again confirmed the obvious,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in an emailed statement. “The president of the United States, as the head of the executive branch, has the ultimate authority to make decisions about staffing levels, administrative organization, and day-to-day operations of federal agencies.”

Departmental Closure

McMahon announced March 11 that the department was cutting half its staff through a reduction in force. Trump followed with a March 20 executive order that said McMahon should “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law, take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education.”

The effort is being challenged in two lawsuits, one brought primarily by states led by Democrats and the other filed by several Massachusetts public school systems and unions.

“Without explaining to the American people its reasoning, a majority of justices on the US Supreme Court have dealt a devastating blow to this nation’s promise of public education for all children,” said Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, which represents the schools and unions.

The New York attorney general’s office, which led the coalition of states, didn’t immediately return requests for comment.

US District Judge Myong Joun in Boston ruled in May that the personnel cuts would “likely cripple the department.” He said the challengers would probably succeed in showing that Trump was effectively dissolving the department by getting rid of its employees, closing regional offices and moving programs to other federal agencies.

“A department without enough employees to perform statutorily mandated functions is not a department at all,” Joun wrote. “This court cannot be asked to cover its eyes while the department’s employees are continuously fired and units are transferred out until the department becomes a shell of itself.”

The Boston-based 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals refused to block Joun’s ruling, paving the way for Trump’s Supreme Court request.

The case is the latest to address Trump’s authority to dismantle entities created by Congress, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the US Agency for International Development and the US Institute of Peace.

The case is McMahon v. New York, 24A1203.

(Updates with reaction starting in sixth paragraph.)

--With assistance from Zoe Tillman.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Elizabeth Wasserman at ewasserman2@bloomberg.net

Steve Stroth

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