The United States government was authorized by the Supreme Court on Tuesday, 8, to carry out layoffs in the federal public service and dismantle the agency structure. The decision may result in the loss of jobs for thousands of American civil servants in areas such as the State Department, Treasury and Housing and Development.
The Supreme Court’s decision annulled the decision of a lower court, which blocked mass layoffs. It is not signed and does not have the number of favorable and contrary votes – which follows a custom in emergency actions. The court judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was publicly positioned against the decision.
The case means a crucial test of the power size of President Donald Trump to restructure the federal government without congressional participation. Technically, the decision of the judges is temporary and guides how the government can act while Trump’s plans are challenged in court. But in practice, it means that the president can proceed with restructuring until the question is judged definitively.
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In a decision of two paragraphs, Supreme Court judges say they concluded that the government “will probably succeed” in defense that the decree in which Trump exposed cut plans is legal. Judges add that Tuesday’s decision does not have a value judgment on the legality of dismissals or reorganizations made by the government.
The decision marks the latest victory of a series of actions earned by the Trump administration in the US Supreme Court in emergency requests, related to their plans to reformulate the federal administration quickly.
On June 27, the Supreme Court judges also limited the power of lower court magistrates to block Trump’s policies.
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Although the votes were not disclosed, the decision included a brief public agreement by Judge Sonia Sotomayor, one of the three liberals of the Court – which suggests wide consensus among the judges regarding the result. Sotomayor wrote that he agreed with the decision of the Supreme Court, but added that the lower court courts are “free to consider” the legality of White House cut plans.
In a 15 -page statement, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson harshly criticized the Supreme Court’s decision, arguing that she undermines the authority of the first instance judges. “(The decision) is not only truly unhappy, but also arrogant and meaningless,” wrote the judge.
“It is not the role of this Court to intervene and question the factual conclusions of a lower court,” he added, in a similar position that expressed last month in the case that decreased the power of lower court judges.
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She stated that “no one seriously disputes” that the US president’s executive decree “would lead to huge consequences in the real world,” including “the dismantling of much of the federal government, as created by Congress.”
“What a person (or president) could call bureaucratic swelling is the prospect of a farmer to have a healthy harvest, the chance of a charcoal miner to breathe free of black lung disease or the opportunity for a preschool child to learn in a safe environment,” wrote the judge.
In recent weeks, judges have issued other decisions on emergency requests that have allowed members of the Government Efficiency Department to gain access to confidential records of millions of Americans maintained by the Social Security Administration. Decisions also closed a humanitarian program designed to give temporary residence to more than 500,000 immigrants from countries facing war and political crisis and gave Trump authorization to dismiss two heads of independent agencies.
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The request for mass layoffs at federal agencies stems from an executive decree, signed by Trump in February, which instructs the authorities to elaborate plans for large -scale cuts in the Federal Administration.
After the decree was announced, several unions and local governments filed lawsuits to try to annul him.
In May, a judge of the Federal District Federal District of the Northern District of California, Susan Illston, temporarily suspended White House plans for layoffs and closing programs. The decision prevented more than 20 US Administration agencies from advancing cuts.
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At first, Illston blocked the decrees for two weeks. It expanded the blockade in the same month, on the grounds that the decree had created a threat to the essential services provided by the government.
According to the judge, the cuts are also probably illegal without the approval of Congress. She concluded that the president cannot conduct a broad reorganization of the executive branch without the cooperation of Congress and would need to follow the process approved by the legislature for government restructuring. The layoffs and closure of agencies were temporarily frozen during process.
The Trump government appealed the decision, but a court of second instance upheld the judge’s decision. The reaction, then, was an emergency request in the Supreme Court.
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In the action, US Attorney General John Sauer stated that the decision of the first instance judge prohibited “almost all executive branch-19 agencies, including 11 ministerial departments” to execute Trump’s plans to reformulate the government. For him, the decision of the first instance was based on the “indefensible” premise that the president must have “explicit statutory authorization” of Congress to act based on “internal decisions of executive branch”.
In response, the US Federal Workers Union, perpetrators of the initial action, stated that the lower courts correctly determined that Trump’s decree probably exceeded the authority and violated the separation of powers. “For over 100 years, presidents of the entire political spectrum have obtained Congress authorization before undertaking the reorganization of the federal government,” they wrote in a memo to the judges.
