Supreme Court allows Trump to proceed with government agency staff cuts

The Supreme Court on Tuesday said it will allow the Trump administration to proceed with large-scale reductions in staff at many federal government agencies as opponents continue to seek to block those efforts in lower-court proceedings.

The Supreme Court’s decision is not the latest word on the legality of the cutbacks, which are being challenged in a lawsuit filed by a group of unions representing government workers, as well as by a handful of U.S. cities and counties.

The high court is likely to consider that issue at a later date.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only one of the court’s nine members to dissent from the ruling Tuesday, which stayed an injunction blocking the so-called reductions in force at 19 federal agencies that was issued in May by a federal district court judge in California.

“In my view, this was the wrong decision at the wrong moment, especially given what little this Court knows about what is actually happening on the ground,” Jackson wrote in her dissent.

“This case is about whether that action 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,” she wrote.

“Yet, for some reason, this Court sees fit to step in now and release the President’s wrecking ball at the outset of this litigation.”

President Donald Trump in February issued an executive order directing federal agencies to “promptly undertake preparations to initiate large-scale reduction in force (RIFs), consistent with applicable law.”

U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer, who is representing the Trump administration, in a filing at the Supreme Court, wrote that Trump’s “order rested on firm legal footing and followed a long historical tradition.”

“For at least about 150 years, Congress has recognized the Executive Branch’s authority to carry out reductions in its workforce as the need arises, subject to statutory preferences for veteran status and other factors,” Sauer wrote.

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