The Trump administration clinched another win today, with the Supreme Court shredding a restraining order on a rogue lower court’s ruling that prevented the government from reorganizing its workforce. For now, the mass layoffs that were put on hold are back on (via The Hill):
The Supreme Court on Tuesday lifted a judge’s order preventing the Trump administration from conducting mass layoffs across the federal bureaucracy, for now.
The court in its unsigned ruling said Trump’s February executive order directing federal agencies to prepare for reductions in force, or RIFs, is likely lawful.
It enables federal agencies to resume implementing Trump’s directive, though the high court left the door open for plaintiffs to challenge any agency’s specific plan down the road.
“We express no view on the legality of any Agency RIF and Reorganization Plan produced or approved pursuant to the Executive Order and Memorandum,” the court’s ruling cautions.
But for now, it marks a major victory for the administration, which has brought a flurry of emergency appeals to the Supreme Court seeking to halt lower judges’ injunctions.
🚨HUGE WIN: SCOTUS sides with President Trump in an 8-1 decisions which will allow federal workforce cuts to go through.
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) July 8, 2025
The swamp is getting DRAINED! 🔥 pic.twitter.com/kGesi47ost
The ruling was 8-1, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting. Yet, as Justice Amy Coney Barrett did in the Casa decision, which curtailed lower court’s national injunction power, Jackson got cooked in the opinion, only it was by Sonia Sotomayor—she had to remind Jackson that the Court can only opine on what’s been presented before them, not what they think is being presented before the body.
🚨 OMG: Now a LIBERAL Supreme Court justice is trying to teach Justice Ketanji Jackson how this whole "judicial" thing works...
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) July 8, 2025
Jackson is the ONLY dissent. Sotomayor has to remind Jackson, for some reason, that the case before them is NOT about what Jackson thought it was.
My… https://t.co/XC1BkhrMs3 pic.twitter.com/FFGFz41Ous
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, concurring in the grant of stay.
I agree with JUSTICE JACKSON that the President cannot restructure federal agencies in a manner inconsistent with congressional mandates. See post, at 13. Here, however, the relevant Executive Order directs agencies to plan reorganizations and reductions in force “consistent with applicable law,” App. to Application for Stay 2a, and the resulting joint memorandum from the Office of Management and Budget and Office of Personnel Management reiterates as much. The plans themselves are not before this Court, at this stage, and we thus have no occasion to consider whether they can and will be carried out consistent with the constraints of law. I join the Court’s stay because it leaves the District Court free to consider those questions in the first instance.
When Ketanji Brown Jackson is too stupid for even Sonya Sotomayor, well, that is saying something.
— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) July 8, 2025
In the CASA decision, Justice Barrett was less charitable, wholly dismissing Jackson’s opinion, and for good reason: it’s not grounded in law.
More of Barrett nuking Jackson from orbit: pic.twitter.com/joKaIdtr0v
— Conn Carroll (@conncarroll) June 27, 2025
Holy shit, this is about as brutal as I've ever seen SCOTUS be on one of their own.
— Kostas Moros (@MorosKostas) June 27, 2025
Translated: "you are so stupid that you aren't even worth responding to." pic.twitter.com/e4gDIBM6Va
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