In another win for President Donald Trump before the US Supreme Court, the Court ruled on Monday that Trump may proceed with his plan to carry out mass layoffs at the Department of Education.
In an unsigned 6-3 ruling, the Court lifted a 1st Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that had indefinitely paused Trump’s plan to terminate about 1,400 employees. The ruling allows the firings to proceed. In recent weeks, the court has allowed terminations at other federal agencies to proceed as well.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s senior liberal member, wrote in a strongly worded dissent that her colleagues had made an “indefensible” decision to let Trump proceed with taking apart an agency that ordinarily can be dismantled only by Congress.
“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,” Sotomayor wrote. She was joined in the dissent by the other two liberal Justices.
Trump ordered mass layoffs earlier this year — cutting its DOE workforce in half — but lower courts have blocked that effort, noting that the Education Department was created by Congress.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon issued a statement in response to the ruling saying the court’s decision is a “significant win for students and families.”
“We will carry out the reduction in force to promote efficiency and accountability and to ensure resources are directed where they matter most — to students, parents, and teachers,” she said. “As we return education to the states, this Administration will continue to perform all statutory duties while empowering families and teachers by reducing education bureaucracy.”
US District Judge Myong Joun, nominated to the bench by former President Joe Biden, had halted Trump’s plans to dismantle the DOE and ordered the administration to reinstate about 1,400 employees who had been fired en masse. The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by a teachers’ union, school districts, states, and local governments.
The Boston-based 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously refused to reverse that order in June, and Trump appealed.
In its appeal to the Supreme Court, the Trump administration asserted that its efforts involve “internal management decisions” and “eliminating discretionary functions that, in the administration’s view, are better left to the states.” Trump had promised during his presidential campaign to return education to the states and get it out of Washington DC. Trump’s lawyers argued before the court that the department would not be eradicated, but simply could conduct its functions with fewer employees.
The court’s decision, Sotomayor wrote, “will unleash untold harm, delaying or denying educational opportunities and leaving students to suffer from discrimination, sexual assault, and other civil rights violations without the (necessary) federal resources”.
The unsigned 6-3 decision continues to reveal the stark, and sometimes bitter, division among the Justices along ideological lines. The next session of the court will begin in October.
Steve Gill is an attorney and Publisher of Tri-Star Daily.
