Legal/Law/Criminal Justice and Reform

Supreme Court Lets Trump Admin Move Forward With Slashing Education Department Staff

Wally Gobetz/Creative Commons/flickr

The Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration on Monday to move forward with major cuts to the Department of Education.

The majority paused a lower court order requiring the administration to reinstate nearly 1,400 employees.

In May, a Biden-appointed federal judge blocked the department’s effort to eliminate nearly half of its employees.

“Today, the Supreme Court again confirmed the obvious: 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,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement. “While today’s ruling is a significant win for students and families, it is a shame that the highest court in the land had to step in to allow President Trump to advance the reforms Americans elected him to deliver using the authorities granted to him by the U.S. Constitution.”

Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

“When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it,” Sotomayor wrote.

Sotomayor wrote that the majority’s decision to allow the administration to move forward with dismantling the department is “indefensible.”

“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,” she wrote. “Unable to join in this misuse of our emergency docket, I respectfully dissent.”