Supreme Court Gives Donald Trump Another Big Win
Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content.
The Supreme Court said President Donald Trump's administration can proceed with plans to layoff some 1,400 employees at the Department of Education—marking another win for the White House at the conservative-leaning high court.
A majority of the justices lifted a lower-court ruling that had indefinitely paused the Trump administration's plan. Liberal Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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Trump is trying to fulfill his campaign promise to end the Education Department and move school policy to the states. 'Today, the Supreme Court again confirmed the obvious: the President of the United States, as the head of the Executive Branch, has the ultimate authority to make decisions about staffing levels, administrative organization, and day-to-day operations of federal agencies," Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement. She said the administration will continue to perform education-related functions required by law while "empowering families and teachers by reducing education bureaucracy." The Education Department workers were placed on administrative leave in March and were to stop receiving salaries on June 9 before a judge intervened at the request of Democratic-led states, school districts and teachers' unions. 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Joun's May 22 order blocked the administration from transferring those functions and required the department to reinstate fired workers. The appeals court said Trump doesn't have to employ as many Education Department workers as the previous administration but can't cut so many that the agency can't function as Congress intended. States challenging the moves said the administration removed nearly all the workers who certify whether colleges and universities qualify for federal student aid programs. And it gutted the department in charge of the data used to allocate billions of dollars to states, lawyers for New York and other states told the Supreme Court. Unless the firings are reversed while the courts are deciding if the administration is acting legally, "it will be effectively impossible to undo much of the damage caused," lawyers for the Democracy Forward Foundation had told the Supreme Court. After the court's decision, Skye Peryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said the group will "aggressively pursue every legal option as this case proceeds to ensure that all children in this country have access to the public education they deserve." The Justice Department had told the Supreme Court that the harms to the government from having to rehire the workers as the litigation continues are greater than any harms the challengers said they'll suffer from diminished department services. The department also opposed the challenge on procedural grounds. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court says Trump can fire Education Department workers
