Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was appointed to the court by President Biden, dissented.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday lifted a lower court order that had blocked President Trump’s executive order requiring government agencies to lay off hundreds of thousands of federal employees.
The order was unsigned. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was appointed to the court by President Biden, dissented. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a fellow liberal, concurred with the court’s decision. The order did not make clear how the other justices voted, but they did say, «we express no view on the legality of any» plans to shrink the federal workforce, and it left open the possibility that the issue could return to the Supreme Court.
Justice Sotomayor, in her concurrence, wrote that the lower courts were free to address the constitutionality of the plans.
«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», she wrote.
In her dissent, Justice Jackson suggested the court was allowing the administration to remake the federal judiciary before the courts had had a chance to determine their legality.
«For some reason, this Court sees fit to step in now and release the President’s wrecking ball at the outset of this litigation», she wrote. «In my view, this decision is not only truly unfortunate but also hubristic and senseless.»
In February, Trump detailed an extensive plan instructing agency heads to prepare for «large-scale reductions in force», known as RIFs.
Later that month, the administration issued an accompanying memorandum alleging that the federal government is «costly, inefficient and deeply in debt», and blaming that inefficiency on «unproductive and unnecessary programs that benefit radical interest groups.
