ICYMI: Supreme Court Lets Trump Continue Education Department Purge

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1:29Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news. You're listening to Bloomberg Businessweek with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio. A divided U.S. Supreme Court let President Donald Trump resume dismantling the Department of Education. It lifts a lower court order that required the reinstatement of as many as 1 ,400 workers. Greg Storr is a Bloomberg News Supreme Court reporter. He joins us from Washington, D.C. He's got the byline on the story as well. Greg, they granted an emergency request from the administration. The justices put on hold a federal district court ruling that said the Trump purge would leave the department unable to perform duties required under U.S.

2:11law. The Supreme Court order, though, will apply while the case continues on appeal. I'm reading right from your story here because the ink is essentially still wet on this one. does this mean that the Trump administration can purge other agencies as well? Not necessarily, but it certainly helps them, at least their legal case. As you said, the big argument against the administration was, hey, you don't have the authority to do this. Only Congress does. And by firing this many people, you're leaving the department unable to do things that Congress said it's supposed to do. And that's an argument that has been cropping up in other cases.

2:53And this decision will probably boost the administration on those actions. So I'm also wondering about what this means just for the Department of Education and what it means for those workers. There's a lot of workers who've been left in limbo. Is that exactly what happens to these workers? They're sort of waiting? Well, they're sort of waiting, but they will be allowed to be put out of a job, at least for the time being. And unpaid? You know, I don't know the answer to that. I apologize. That's okay. I don't want to speak with that knowledge here. But, you know, given the way the court has been handling these things, this is supposed to just be a temporary order.

3:37But the cases where the Supreme Court has issued a temporary order and then later on reversed itself once it actually took up the legal issues on the merits, that's a pretty rare occurrence. So this certainly puts the wind at the administration's sails in terms of actually being able to fire these workers once and for all. It's July 14th. Typically, correct me if I'm wrong, Greg, but this is because this is the world that you live in. Isn't this a time where the justices are not doing this stuff? They're like out from June or early July all the way until October? It depends on what you mean by this stuff.

4:17This is part of the so-called shadow docket or emergency docket. It is the administration coming to the Supreme Court. And this is actually a fairly old request filed a number of weeks ago. And the administration is saying, hey, we can't wait. We need you to lift this lower court ruling, to stay this lower court ruling, to set the rules of the road while the case is being litigated. And that's the sort of thing that the Supreme Court will act on at any time. It doesn't just, you know, do that in its nine-month calendar for the cases that are considered on the merits. When it comes to this case, the three liberals on the court dissented.

4:57What was their message? Yeah, really, really strong words from Justice Soniam Sotomayor, who wrote the opinion for the three of them. She said that the court had handed the executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out. And this is a theme we've been hearing from the court's liberals. They are saying that the conservative majority on this court is letting the president ignore the law, just do whatever he wants. What do we expect to hear from the Supreme Court when it comes to this so-called shadow docket before October or in the meantime? John? We're going to have more of these cases.

5:35Right now, there's one other significant one involving another one of these cases where the president is trying to remove the heads of these independent agencies. It's one involving the Consumer Product Safety Commission. He's trying to fire the Democratic appointed members there. We'll probably get more cases. Really good chance we'll get birthright citizenship again in some form. Not inconceivable. We'll get tariffs in some form. They're not there yet, but there's so much lower court litigation going on that undoubtedly there will be more very big cases at the Supreme Court this summer. And they really seem, not just because of the makeup, but it really seems like the president is having a series of wins when it comes to the shadow docket.

6:21Yeah, he's very much been on a roll. We saw a couple cases earlier on involving very fast deportations under this couple-century-old law known as the Alien Enemies Act. That's the cases where the administration was sending people to the prison in El Salvador, and the Supreme Court said, whoa, hold on, you at least have to give them a chance to make their case for why they can't be sent there. Beyond that, however, they've pretty much given the administration a free hand, whether it be other immigration-related matters or, in this case, the structure of the government and firing people, both mass firings like this one and firing top officials of agencies.

7:04Hey, Greg Storr, thanks for joining us. I know you just wrote this story. You have been super busy, so we really appreciate it this afternoon. That's Greg Storr. He's a Bloomberg News Supreme Court reporter. Check out his reporting and the entire team's reporting. It's on the Bloomberg Terminal and at Bloomberg.com.

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