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Further wide-ranging HR issues are anticipated after the US Supreme Court gave the final go-ahead for mass layoffs across federal departments, despite efforts to stop the policy from going ahead.
The court cleared the way for Donald Trump’s administration to proceed with a controversial reduction in federal jobs after lifting a lower court order that had frozen the effort while litigation continued.
In an unsigned order, the court stated that the administration was “likely to succeed on its argument that the executive order” and its accompanying memorandum were lawful. It did not weigh in on the legality of any specific agency-level plans.
Court decision opens door to agency staffing cuts
The move is likely to have a wide-ranging impact on departments including agriculture, commerce, health and human services, state, treasury, and veterans affairs, among others. The job losses, described as “reductions in force,” could number in the hundreds of thousands.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the sole dissenter on the nine-member court. She warned that Judge Susan Illston’s “temporary, practical, harm-reducing preservation of the status quo was no match for this court’s demonstrated enthusiasm for greenlighting this president’s legally dubious actions in an emergency posture.”
She added that her colleagues were making the “wrong decision at the wrong moment, especially given what little this Court knows about what is actually happening on the ground.”
In an earlier ruling on 22 May, Judge Illston had sided with a coalition of unions, non-profits, and local governments that challenged the administration’s downsizing initiative. She wrote: “As history demonstrates, the president may broadly restructure federal agencies only when authorized by Congress.”
Illston had blocked agencies from implementing large-scale layoffs or making sweeping program cuts. She also ordered the reinstatement of terminated employees, although that part of the ruling was put on hold pending appeals.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had upheld her ruling on 30 May in a 2-1 decision, prompting the administration to request emergency intervention from the Supreme Court.
Critics link move to Project 2025 agenda
Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright responded to the decision, saying: “I’m disappointed but I’m not shocked or surprised. This rightwing activist court has proven ruling after ruling, time after time, that they are going to sing the songs and dance to the tune of Trumpism. A lot of this is just implementation of what we saw previewed in Project 2025.”
Project 2025, developed by the conservative Heritage Foundation, outlines a framework for dramatically reducing the size of government. Trump had previously declared “a critical transformation of the federal bureaucracy,” issuing an executive order in February to prepare agencies for staff and program reductions.
Billionaire Elon Musk was initially appointed to lead the effort through a proposed “department of government efficiency,” also referred to as DOGE. Musk has since stepped away from the project and became a vocal critic of the Donald Trump and his administration.
The plaintiffs opposing the layoffs argued that if allowed to proceed, the administration’s “breakneck reorganization” would mean that “programs, offices and functions across the federal government will be abolished, agencies will be radically downsized from what Congress authorized, critical government services will be lost and hundreds of thousands of federal employees will lose their jobs.”
