The Supreme Court Didn't Bother Telling Federal Workers Why It's Helping Trump Fire Them - Balls and Strikes

[In It to Win It]

Madiba Dennie @ Balls and Strkes

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court blocked a lower court order that temporarily stopped President Donald Trump from laying off tens of thousands of federal workers and effectively dismantling congressionally-created agencies by presidential fiat. Six weeks ago, Judge Susan Illston, a judge in California appointed by President Bill Clinton, explained at length that Trump was asking her to either declare that dozens of past presidents and congresses “did not properly understand the separation of powers,” or to “ignore” what the executive branch was plainly doing. “The court can do neither,” Illston said.

But in an unsigned and unexplained order, the Supreme Court just did. “The application for stay presented to Justice Kagan and by her referred to the Court is granted,” said the Court in American Federation of Government Employees v. Trump. Only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted her dissent.

The American Federation case is just one of many in which federal district courts have blocked Trump directives while legal challenges to those directives proceed, only for the Supreme Court to swoop in to override those decisions. Oftentimes, the Court does so without a single sentence explaining what the trial court judges ostensibly did wrong, leaving everyone else unsure about their rights and obligations under law.

The district courts, in contrast, showed their work. In Shilling v. United States, for instance, Judge Benjamin Settle published a 65-page opinion explaining why he was barring the Trump administration from ejecting transgender servicemembers from the military. Settle, a judge sitting in Seattle appointed by President George W. Bush, determined that Trump’s order violated the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech as well as the Fifth Amendment’s rights to equal protection and due process. And he rejected the government’s contention that courts must simply defer to Trump’s judgment as commander in chief: Any harm the government could claim “pales in comparison to the hardships imposed on transgender service members and otherwise qualified transgender accession candidates, tipping the balance of hardships sharply toward plaintiffs,” concluded Settle.

The conservative justices who keep rescuing Trump's agenda are notably reluctant to show their work

— Balls & Strikes (@ballsandstrikes.org) 2025-07-09T14:10:14.284Z

[atreides1]

1. Okay

Can't we just call them what they are, the Volksgerichtshof(People's Court)?

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/law-and-justice-in-the-third-reich

[c-rational]

2. No words

[Igel]

3. I sort of thought they did.

From the per curiam opinion:

Because the Government is likely to succeed on its argument that the Executive Order and Memorandum are lawful—and because the other factors bearing on whether to grant a stay are satisfied—we grant the application. 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 District Court enjoined further implementation or approval of the plans based on its view about the illegality of the Executive Order and Memorandum, not on any assessment of the plans themselves. Those plans are not before this Court.

Sotomayor's concurrence explicates this a bit more, and while it's not necessarily what each of the majority hold, it seems plausibly what others also hold:

I agree with Justice Jackson that the President can- not 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.

If the EO and the derivative documents say that the plans are to implemented in a way "consistent with applicable law" and the plans aren't known, how can you say a priori that the plans will violate applicable law?

Don't you need a violation for an injunction, not just the suspicion that maybe there'll be something illegal in the implementation?

So ask for the plan. Review how implementation goes. Check against applicable law (which is presumably what "congressional mandates" means). Then judge.

They. Kicked. The. Can. But they didn't prejudge.

I suspect the actual plans presented will be at odds with the plans executed and one or both will be in violation of all sorts of statutes. That'll make for a hell of a mess. But it's a mess required by due process--you don't enjoin what's claimed to be a legal action because it's obviously going to be illegal and you don't trust the defendant. You punish illegality present and past, not illegality future.

[c-rational]

4. Thank you for this cogent response.

Last edited Wed Jul 9, 2025, 07:47 PM - Edit history (1)