US Supreme Court removes federal court order to reinstate fired agency employees – JURIST
The US Supreme Court Tuesday axed a federal court order that would have required the Trump Administration to reinstate thousands of federal employees who were fired as part of the executive branch’s efforts to downsize administrative agencies.
The court blocked the order upon hearing an emergency appeal filed by the administration following the lower court’s order. The justices dismissed the order on the grounds that the plaintiffs — nine nonprofit organizations — lacked standing to bring the case. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Kentanji Brown Jackson said they would not have interfered with the order.
The order would have forced the administration to reinstate roughly 16,000 laid-off employees across six different agencies. However, because of another pending order filed in Maryland, the Supreme Court’s ruling remains narrow, and the ruling allows many laid-off government employees to stay on paid leave as the legal process advances.
In their reply to the emergency appeal, plaintiffs argued that “[t]he Government illegally fired tens of thousands of public servants, significantly degrading crucial services on which the public and members of Respondent organizations rely.”
The administration countered that the lower court’s ruling violated separation of powers principles, writing “[the Supreme Court] should not allow a single district court to erase Congress’s handiwork and seize control over reviewing federal personnel decisions—much less to do so by vastly exceeding the limits on the scope of its equitable authority and ordering reinstatements en masse.”
Lawsuits challenging agency employee layoffs state that roughly 24,000 workers have been fired since President Trump came into office. Ordering district court Judge William H. Alsup voiced displeasure with the administration’s action, stating that the lack of reasons given to employees is “just not right in our country” and that the government should not “run our agencies with lies.”
The case is one of several cases that have arrived at the Supreme Court following legal challenges to the Trump Administration. On Monday, the court threw out a temporary injunction placed on the administration’s attempted removal of the Temporary Protected Status of Venezuelan immigrants. The 5-4 majority relied on the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to rule that the administration was within its power to remove migrants. However the court also required individuals be given an opportunity to present their case before a judge before being deported.
