Around 1,300 employees of the Education Department will be laid off after the Supreme Court of the United States ruled against a lower court’s preliminary injunction handed down in May. The Supreme Court struck down the court order handed down by a U.S. District Judge Myong J. Joun of Boston, Massachusetts that said the cuts would make it “effectively impossible” for the Department to carry forth its “legally required responsibilities.”
The Trump administration can continue with the terminations of Department employees.
The Supreme Court decision is temporary because “the case will still be argued on the merits before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit before potentially returning to the high court for a full hearing,” Government Executive reported.
The reduction-in-forces combined with voluntary and incentivized departures would cause an overall mass dismissal of 50 percent of the workforce, Government Executive reported.
In the Supreme Court hearing, the Trump administration argued it was “too speculative” for the states, school districts and unions to conclude that the reduction in workforce would have a negative impact.
“The injunction rests on the untenable assumption that every terminated employee is necessary to perform the Department of Education’s statutory functions,” U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented on the decision.
“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 in the dissent. “[The majority] hands the executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out.”
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