Supreme Court OKs Trump’s mass layoffs of federal employees

Washington – The Supreme Court paved the way on Tuesday for the Trump administration to dismiss tens of thousands of federal employees and reduced their agencies without requesting the approval of the congress.

During a vote of 8-1, the judges raised an order of a federal judge in San Francisco who blocked mass layoffs in more than 20 departments and agencies.

The court regularly took part regularly with President Trump and his general view of the executive power on issues involving federal agencies.

In a brief ordinance, the court said: “The government is likely to succeed in its argument that the decree and the memorandum are legal”, referring to the plans aimed at reducing staff. But he said he did not rule on specific layoffs.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor concluded with the decision on the grounds that she was narrow and temporary.

Dissenting alone, judge Ketanji Brown Jackson said the court should not have intervened.

“Under our Constitution, the Congress has the power to establish administrative agencies and to detail their functions,” she wrote.

Since mid-April, the court has rendered a series of temporary orders which have paved the way for Trump’s planned reductions in funding and endowment in federal agencies.

Disputes will continue before the lower courts, but the judges are not likely to overthrow the course and to rule next year that they made a mistake by allowing staff cuts to continue.

The layoff has asked whether the congress or the president had the power to reduce agencies.

The American district judge Susan Illston in San Francisco said that Congress, not the president, creates federal agencies and decides on their size and functions.

“Agencies may not carry out any reorganizations and reductions in large scale of the blatant contempt for the mandates of the Congress, and a president cannot initiate the reorganization of large-scale executive branches without associating with Congress,” she said on May 22.

His order prevented more than 20 departments and agencies from carrying out mass dismissals in response to a Trump decree.

They included the departments of trade, energy, health and social services, housing and urban development, interior, work, state, treasury, transport and veterans as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, the General Services Administration and the National Science Foundation.

She said that the layoffs planned are great. The Department of Health and Social Services plans to reduce from 8,000 to 10,000 employees and the energy department 8,500. The veterans administration had planned to dismiss 83,000 employees, but recently said that this would reduce this number to around 30,000.

The unions had continued to stop the layoffs as illegal.

They agreed that agencies did not act alone to reduce their staff. On the contrary, Trump management and budget office under Russ Vought led the reorganization and restructuring of a dozen agencies. She said that only Congress can reorganize agencies.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals American, by a vote of 2-1, refused the appeal by the administration of the judge’s order.

Calling on the Supreme Court, Trump lawyers insisted that the president had the full power to dismiss tens of thousands of employees.

“The Constitution does not presume the presidential control of the staffing of agencies,” said General D. John Sauer, lawyer, in his appeal, “and the president does not need the special authorization of the congress.”

He said federal law allows agencies to reduce their staff.

“Neither the congress nor the executive power never intended to make class federal bureaucrats with a lifetime job, whether there is work to do or not,” wrote Sauer.