The Supreme Court opens the door to mass federal layoffs

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0:32President Donald Trump's second term has been an exercise in remaking the federal government. His administration has fired tens of thousands of federal workers across almost all agencies. But a legal question has loomed over these actions. Can Trump unilaterally slice up the federal government however he wants? Yesterday, the Supreme Court weighed in. At least for now, Trump can continue to order mass layoffs.

1:03From the newsroom of The Washington Post, this is Post Reports. I'm Colby Ikowitz. It's Wednesday, July 9th. Today, we'll unpack the Supreme Court's decision to allow Trump to go ahead and order mass layoffs at federal agencies. The Post and Marimo joins me to explain this case, how it worked its way up and into the so-called shadow docket, and what this ruling could mean for the future of presidential powers.

1:33Anne, hi. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me, Colby. So Anne, I want to understand, so there's been a new ruling from the Supreme Court this week, and the case itself is kind of confusing. I'm also a little confused how the Supreme Court is ruling on cases, even though its term ended last month. So can you just walk me through kind of the beats of this, how we got to this point? Sure. So you're right. The Supreme Court's term officially ended on June 27th when they issued their final opinions from the regular merits docket. What we're talking about today are the court's emergency orders that can come at any time.

2:09And these are in response to requests from the Trump administration or other parties asking the court to please act quickly, saying there's an urgent need for you to look at this immediately and decide what the status quo should be while litigation continues in the lower courts. Got it. So this is like a temporary decision while the case kind of continues on through the courts, like you said. Exactly. And this docket, credits call it the shadow docket, used to be really for death penalty cases. When somebody was about to be executed, their lawyers would run to the court and say, please intervene, stop this at this moment.

2:46But this practice has really proliferated in recent years with presidents trying to enact their policies, running to the court and saying, lower court judges can't halt this. Please step in and let me enact my new policy. So what is this case about? Because it seems like a big one. Sure. So back in February, President Trump ordered federal agencies to plan for mass layoffs and a total restructuring of the federal government to shrink the federal workforce and to eliminate what he called waste and bloat. But several labor unions stepped in and filed a lawsuit in California and said that this is illegal.

3:26You need to coordinate with Congress and that the president can carry out his policies. But this is such a major restructuring that there needs to be a cooperation with Congress, which set up the agencies and directed their government functions across the board. Right. Because, I mean, my understanding has always been like, well, if Congress authorizes and appropriates a program, then it would have to be Congress that would end that program. And I saw that the federal judge in California who took up this case kind of made that argument, right? Right. That's what the federal judge said, that yes, the president is in charge of the executive branch, but Congress has allocated the money and directed what the agencies should do.

4:07And so if there's going to be this major change, there needs to be a cooperation between the president and Congress. Okay, so this federal judge in California rules to halt these plans. So what does Trump do? So after Judge Susan Ilston in California put Trump's plans on hold, he appealed to the Ninth Circuit. This is the appeals court. They upheld Ilston's order, and then Trump quickly appealed to the Supreme Court and said, I need your help. Please allow me to go forward with these plans. And so what did the Supreme Court decide? So last night, we got an order from the court with the majority saying that the president can go forward with these plans for mass layoffs and restructuring.

4:54We got one justice noting her dissent. That's Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. But what was interesting is that Justice Sonia Sotomayor, also a liberal justice, joined the majority here because she said President Trump's memo back in February directed agencies to act consistent with federal law. So she said at this moment, this is preliminary. We're not looking at the legality of the plans or any specific layoffs, but the order to the agencies to come up with these reorganizations can go forward. And then there's always room, she said, for the judge to look again at the actual carrying out of these plans to see if those are legal.

5:35So the court did not answer the question of whether specific layoffs or restructuring of an agency is valid. And that's the issue that could come back to the court.

5:51This is interesting. So basically the court is saying you can go ahead with your plans to lay people off, downsize, but we're not going to actually get into the issue itself of whether or not it's legal to fire them. Yes, and this is what Justice Jackson picked up on in her dissent. She's basically saying that the harm will be done by the time any court gets to look at the legality of this. She said that her colleagues in the majority are allowing Trump to take a wrecking ball to the government now. And essentially, it would be too late once a court steps in after the fact. OK, but you said that Justice Sonia Sotomayor joined with the majority, right?

6:36And so there's one more liberal justice, Justice Elena Kagan. How did she rule? So that's what's really interesting about the so-called shadow docket. The orders are typically short and they're unsigned, so there's no vote count. All we know is what's listed in the order, and we know that Justice Jackson dissented. We know that Justice Sotomayor joined the majority. Justice Kagan did not sign on. So we can say that it appears she joined the majority in this decision. Okay, so if I understand this right, because Kagan didn't note her dissent, we can kind of assume that she joined the majority. So is it then surprising to you that the two other liberal justices other than Jackson may have sided with the majority in this case that's going to allow the Trump administration to go forward with its remaking of the federal government?

7:29Somewhat surprising because at least one or two or three liberals have dissented in many of these other orders that have allowed the president to fire independent regulators, probationary employees. But here it looks like they're taking it as it comes and they're saying the memo itself that ordered agencies to act in accordance with law suggests that they are going to give him the benefit of the doubt and let them proceed and then wait to see when the issue percolates again to decide whether or not those steps are legal. I'm curious, Anne, because at the end of the Supreme Court's term, they made a pretty big decision that basically said that federal judges can't order universal injunctions to halt executive orders like these.

8:19Did that ruling play into this decision at all that, you know, a California judge shouldn't be able to stop the president? Yeah, it's unclear because it's not a full ruling from the court. It's just this brief order that doesn't include a lot of explanation or reasoning. But certainly the administration, when they celebrated this ruling last night, sort of made that point that a federal judge was stopping the president from carrying out these plans. Does this mean that we're about to see like a ton more mass layoffs at federal agencies this summer? That's a great question. I think it's too early to know the full impact of the order.

8:59I think it's pretty interesting to note that since Elon Musk left Washington, there have been questions about sort of the future of his Doge service. The Department of Veterans Affairs earlier this week sort of backed off of its plans for huge layoffs and instead said that it can reduce its workforce through retirements and attrition. And then there's a separate case from Rhode Island that also seems to put a pause on some of the layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services. So I think it's too early to know the full impact. But I will say at the State Department, it's clear that they are moving ahead.

9:39My colleagues who cover the State Department were hearing from employees last night and today that they're getting messages already about conference rooms being booked for firings to take place.

9:54After the break, we discuss the ways the Supreme Court has permitted Trump's agenda and the way this might erode our Constitution's safeguards against unchecked presidential power. We'll be right back.

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11:10So, Anne, I've been thinking, like, this is not the first time the Supreme Court has ruled on cases related to executive orders from Trump. I mean, is it normal that the Supreme Court is ruling on so many things that the president is trying to do? Yeah, so what's different is the number of times that the president is coming to the court asking the justices to intervene and just the huge number of executive orders that the president has introduced to really dramatically remake the government has prompted scores and scores of lawsuits, I think something over 200 lawsuits. So that's why we're seeing all of this action at the Supreme Court.

11:47And these cases are being filed in districts where the judges may tend to be favorable to the parties challenging the president. So everything is moving very quickly. And that's why the Supreme Court's getting involved so often. I know that critics of the president say that he's kind of using the Supreme Court to essentially circumvent Congress, not go through normal legislative order, and to kind of push through his executive orders. Is that a fair criticism? Well, I mean, the court has checked the president in certain areas, particularly on due process for migrants that the administration has tried to deport on a fast track without any notice or opportunity to challenge their deportation.

12:32So we've seen pushback there. But it is true that they have been receptive to his claims of presidential power and, again, allowed him to kick transgender troops out of the military, to fire independent regulators, even though they're protected by statutes passed by Congress. So they have been stepping aside and clearing the way for him, at least on a temporary basis in many of these cases. It occurs to me, Anne, that the ruling about federal judges not being able to intervene on these executive orders, not going through Congress, really upsets our traditional checks and balances that we have in place to regulate presidential power.

13:14Have any members of Congress or other lawmakers been pushing back on this approach? Certainly, you've seen that from Democratic lawmakers, but we have not seen Republican leaders in Congress raising concerns about this. In fact, they've been saying that the court should put limits on lower court judges blocking presidents' policies nationwide. And I'll just add that there still are ways for judges to check the president. It's just going to be more cumbersome and require more lawsuits to be filed. You know, and to outside observers who maybe aren't following the court day in and day out, it just feels like they've been permissive to Trump and all of his efforts to expand his powers.

14:00Is that true? So the administration has certainly had a lot of success on the emergency docket, getting the court to clear the way for the administration to move forward while litigation continues. But there are some examples of the court pushing back. Justice Amy Coney Barrett and the chief justice joined with the liberals to say that the administration had to unfreeze certain foreign aid funding early on in the Trump administration. We saw the justices pushing back when Trump has tried to invoke a wartime power to fast track deportations of migrants. And probably most notably, the court said that Trump had to take steps to bring back Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was wrongly deported and is now back in the United States.

14:50Yeah, and I'm glad you brought up Amy Coney Barrett, because I feel like more than anyone, she's gotten a lot of criticism from the right for, in some cases, ruling against the White House. Talk to me about that. Yes. So she is definitely the most unpredictable of the justices and has in past terms shown a willingness to join with the liberal justices on various issues. She also, early on before Trump returned to office, said that his criminal sentencing could not be delayed. So that led to a lot of harsh criticism of her from conservatives and Republican allies of the president. But everyone should remember that Justice Barrett is the one who authored the major decision on the last day of the term, really stripping lower court judges of the ability to halt the president's policies nationwide.

15:40She also was part of the majority that said states can ban gender transition care for minors. And she would have gone further than the majority in that case and raised concerns about the impact of the court's decision on other laws, for instance, bans on transgender athletes on women's and girls' sports teams. I mean, these rulings seem to really put the Supreme Court in an incredibly powerful position. And obviously, conservatives have a majority, you know, a six to three majority in the court right now and probably will for maybe another generation or two. It really is the ultimate decider in these high stakes cases.

16:20Is the court giving itself too much power? So I think that's one of the takeaways that some critics have had from the last ruling of the term, which said lower court judges can't impose these nationwide injunctions, but that the Supreme Court can still have the final say over what the status quo will be while litigation continues. So that does consolidate more power in the justices. And I mean, I saw a little bit, you know, after the Supreme Court ruled on the federal judges and whether or not they could intervene, you know, what's going to happen when the Democrat is president, right? Like, can a Democrat then, you know, issue a bunch of executive orders that would normally go through a legislative track and not have to answer to anyone?

17:07I mean, what precedent is all this setting for kind of the expansion of presidential powers? So that's what Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned in her dissent. She said, you know, this will allow Democratic presidents to take away assault weapons from individual gun owners so that it will apply to whoever is in office. And that's the concern that she raised. And is there anything else, Anne, before we let you go? Obviously, the term ended at the end of June just a few weeks ago. Were there any other big cases that we should know about? So I think that we'll see throughout the summer, depending on litigation in the lower courts, more of these emergency requests from the administration.

17:46There's still several pending out there, one about dismantling the Department of Education. I think throughout the summer, we'll continue to see these emergency orders as Trump gets opinions from lower courts trying to block his policies. And the Supreme Court also announced kind of what it's going to be hearing in the fall, right? Is there anything interesting coming up in a couple of months? Yes, so the court is still filling out its calendar, but they're showing that their willingness to wade into some of these big cultural battles again. They've taken two cases challenging state bans on transgender athletes on women's and girls sports teams.

18:25So they're going to be right back in the middle of these big cultural battles starting in October.

18:34Well, we'll all be watching. Anne, thanks so much for joining us. I really appreciate it. Thanks so much.

18:43Anne Marimo is a Supreme Court correspondent for The Post. That's it for Post Reports. Thanks for listening. If you want to show your support for the show, please subscribe to The Washington Post. Not only is it a great way to help us continue to do this work, but you can now get access to Washington Post podcasts ad-free in Apple Podcasts. Subscribe in Apple Podcasts or by following the link in our show notes. Today's show was produced by Arjun Singh with help from Alana Gordon and Tadeo Ruiz-Sandoval. It was edited by Ariel Plotnick and mixed by Sean Carter. Thanks to Debbie Will Gordon. I'm Colby Echowitz.

19:20We'll be back tomorrow with more stories from The Washington Post.

19:32John Deere is putting in work and putting up highlights. Oh man, look at those passes. Tillage, planting, harvesting. Three years in and these pre-owned machines are still at the top of their game. We're talking reliability, performance, and long-term potential. And get this, these veteran machines can pick up the latest precision tech with ease. You know it and fans ready to add John Deere certified pre-owned equipment and more options to their lineup can shop at machinefinder.com. Booyah!