Supreme Court Backs Trump’s Federal Workforce Reduction Plan

Clear Facts

• The Supreme Court has allowed President Donald Trump to proceed with plans to reduce the federal workforce.
• Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, criticizing the decision as “hubristic and senseless.”
• Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted that the executive order only directed agencies to prepare plans for workforce reduction consistent with the law.

In a significant move, the Supreme Court has given President Donald Trump the green light to advance his plans to cut down the federal workforce. This decision lifts a previous injunction from a lower court that had blocked the implementation of Trump’s executive order, which directs federal agencies to prepare for “large-scale reductions” in their workforce.

The Supreme Court’s order stated, “Because the Government is likely to succeed on its argument that the Executive Order and Memorandum are lawful—and because the other factors bearing on whether to grant a stay are satisfied—we grant the application.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the sole dissenter in this decision. She expressed her disagreement by labeling the majority’s decision as “hubristic and senseless.” In her dissent, she argued, “I see no basis to conclude that the District Court erred—let alone clearly so—in finding that the President is attempting to fundamentally restructure the Federal Government.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, while agreeing that the President cannot restructure federal agencies contrary to congressional mandates, pointed out that the executive order merely instructed agencies to draft plans for workforce reduction “consistent with applicable law.”

She remarked, “The plans themselves are not before this Court, at this stage, and we thus have no occasion to consider whether they can and will be carried out consistent with the constraints of law.”

The Trump administration, in its application, argued that the lower court’s injunction had “brought to a halt numerous in-progress RIFs at more than a dozen federal agencies.” This, they claimed, created confusion about the steps agencies could take regarding reductions in force and forced the government to retain thousands of employees at taxpayer expense, even when their continued service was deemed unnecessary by the agencies.

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