The Supreme Court lifted an injunction placed by a San Francisco district judge which blocked the Trump administration from reducing the federal workforce in large numbers.
President Donald Trump issued an executive order as part of his administration’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative in February, calling for agency heads to “promptly undertake preparations to initiate large-scale reductions in force (RIFs), consistent with applicable law.”
Multiple federal government employee unions sued, arguing the mass layoffs were illegal, Politico reported.
In May, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston, a Clinton appointee, ruled that 21 federal agencies could not move forward with plans to reduce the number of their employees and placed an injunction on the administration blocking it from doing so.
“The President has the authority to seek changes to executive branch agencies, but he must do so in lawful ways and, in the case of large-scale reorganizations, with the cooperation of the legislative branch,” her order said.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 ruling in May, upheld Illston’s order.
However, in a three-paragraph decision on Tuesday, the Supreme Court lifted the district judge’s injunction, concluding that the Trump administration is likely to succeed in its underlying case as it moves through the litigation process.
The apparent 8-1 order from the court was unsigned.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a one-paragraph concurring opinion, saying that “the relevant Executive Order directs agencies to plan reorganizations and reductions in force” in a manner that is “consistent with applicable law.”
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“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,” she said.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the lone dissenter, wrote as part of a 15-page opinion, “At bottom, this case is about whether that action amounts to a structural overhaul that usurps Congress’s policymaking prerogatives—and it is hard to imagine deciding that question in any meaningful way after those changes have happened.”
“Yet, for some reason, this Court sees fit to step in now and release the President’s wrecking ball at the outset of this litigation,” she said.
“While the President no doubt has the authority to manage the Executive Branch, our system does not allow the President to rewrite laws on his own under the guise of that authority,” Jackson argued.
The case will now return to Illston’s court, where she will be able to rule whether the specific Trump administration reduction-in-force plans are consistent with applicable federal law.
Last month, the Supreme Court sided with Trump, ruling 6-3 that federal district court judges do not have the authority to issue nationwide injunctions.
In her majority opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett chastised Jackson’s dissent, writing, “We will not dwell on Justice Jackson’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself.”
“Observing the limits on judicial authority—including, as relevant here, the boundaries of the Judiciary Act of 1789—is required by a judge’s oath to follow the law,” Barrett contended, noting Jackson in her dissent called such constraints “legalese.”
Justice Barrett’s brutal takedown of the dissent authored by Justice Jackson is something one wouldn’t have predicted from oral arguments. pic.twitter.com/oA6iX6Gxrx
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) June 27, 2025
Jackson wrote in her dissent that citing the Judiciary Act of 1789 regarding lower courts issuing universal injunctions involves a “mind-numbingly technical query.”
“But that legalese is a smokescreen. It obscures a far more basic question of enormous legal and practical significance: May a federal court in the United States of America order the Executive to follow the law?” she wrote.
Barrett countered, “Justice Jackson would do well to heed her own admonition: ‘[E]veryone, from the President on down, is bound by law.’ That goes for judges too.”
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