Supreme Court allows Trump to resume Education Department layoffs
by Zach Schonfeld and Lexi Lonas Cochran - 07/14/25 3:30 PM ET
The Supreme Court on Monday allowed President Trump to resume efforts to dismantle the Department of Education in an apparent 6-3 vote along ideological lines, lifting a judge’s order to reinstate hundreds of employees terminated in mass layoffs.
The administration’s victory enables the president to move closer to fulfilling of one of his major campaign promises to oversee the elimination of the Education Department, which was created in the 1970s.
The majority did not explain its reasoning, as is typical in emergency decisions. The court’s three Democratic-appointed justices publicly dissented, calling their colleagues’ ruling “indefensible.”
“It hands the Executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
“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,” they continued.
Since entering office, the administration has sought to lay off half of the Education Department’s workforce and move some of the agency’s core functions, such as managing student loans, to other federal departments.
U.S. District Judge Myong Joun blocked those efforts in May. Ruling that Trump needed congressional authorization, Joun ordered the administration reinstate the roughly 1,400 workers laid off in March.
The Supreme Court’s ruling lifts Joun’s injunction as the litigation proceeds in the lower courts, but it is not a final decision. The dispute could return to the justices.
Following the ruling, Education Secretary Linda McMahon vowed to carry out the layoffs once again.
more
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5400461-supreme-court-education-department-layoffs/
