(Bloomberg) — The US Supreme Court bolstered President Donald Trump’s campaign to fire tens of thousands of federal workers, blocking a judge’s order that required the administration to reinstate employees in six government departments.
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Granting a Trump request over two dissents, the high court on Tuesday gave the president at least a temporary win on what has become one of his signature initiatives, a step he says is warranted to cut costs and realign agency priorities.
The decision marks the third time in less than a week that the Supreme Court has backed Trump’s actions to transform the federal government and other American institutions. It’s the first mass-firing case to reach the high court.
The case involves 16,000 fired workers who had probationary status, meaning they were recently hired or promoted to new roles, at the departments of Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior, Treasury and Veterans Affairs. US District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco had ordered those workers reinstated while a lawsuit by unions and nonprofit organizations went forward.
In two-paragraph decision, the high court said the nine groups that secured Alsup’s order lacked the legal right to press the case. “Under established law, those allegations are presently insufficient to support the organizations’ standing,” the court said.
Workers in 19 states and the District of Columbia still must be kept on paid administrative leave at a larger set of agencies under a judge’s order in a similar case in Maryland. But the Supreme Court decision means the administration won’t have to continue fully restoring workers to their jobs at the six departments in the 20 jurisdictions — and can fire employees who aren’t covered by the Maryland order.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson said they would have denied the Trump request. Sotomayor gave no explanation, while Jackson said she wouldn’t have considered the issue of standing in the context of an emergency application.
The groups challenging the firings, led by the American Federation of Government Employees, vowed to keep fighting.
“There is no doubt that thousands of public service employees were unlawfully fired in an effort to cripple federal agencies and their crucial programs that serve millions of Americans every day,” the groups said. “Today’s order by the US Supreme Court is deeply disappointing but is only a momentary pause in our efforts to enforce the trial court’s orders and hold the federal government accountable.”
