Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent in a Supreme Court order handed down on Tuesday stood out enough that it prompted one of her liberal colleagues to voice disagreement with her.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, said in a brief concurrence that the high court’s 8-1 order clearing the way for President Donald Trump to continue downsizing the government was the right decision.
‘I agree with Justice Jackson that the President cannot restructure federal agencies in a manner inconsistent with congressional mandates,’ Sotomayor wrote. ‘Here, however, the relevant Executive Order directs agencies to plan reorganizations and reductions in force ‘consistent with applicable law’ … and the resulting joint memorandum from the Office of Management and Budget and Office of Personnel Management reiterates as much.’
Sotomayor’s remarks were included as part of a short two-page order from the Supreme Court saying the executive order Trump signed in February directing federal agencies to plan for ‘large-scale reductions in force (RIFs), consistent with applicable law’ was likely lawful.
The Supreme Court said it had no opinion at this stage on the legality of any actual job cuts and that that question was not before the high court.
But Jackson felt differently, according to her 15-page dissent affixed to the order.
Jackson, the most junior justice and an appointee of former President Joe Biden, said a lower court judge was right to pause any further reductions to the federal workforce. Jackson lectured her colleagues for thinking otherwise.
‘That temporary, practical, harm-reducing preservation of the status quo was no match for this Court’s demonstrated enthusiasm for greenlighting this President’s legally dubious actions in an emergency posture,’ Jackson said.
Any future government downsizing would come on top of thousands of government employees already losing their jobs or opting to accept buy-out plans as part of Trump’s stated goals to scale down the federal government and make it run more efficiently.
The Supreme Court’s order arose from a lawsuit brought by labor organizations and nonprofits, who alleged that the president’s decision to dramatically slash the federal workforce infringed on Congress’s authority over approving and funding government jobs.
The order was issued on an emergency basis and is only temporary. It will remain in place while the Trump administration appeals the lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.