The Supreme Court as Enabler of Dictatorship -- Robert Kuttner

[erronis]

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2025-07-09-supreme-court-enabler-of-dictatorship/

The Court uses a backdoor procedure to allow Trump to get rid of civil service employees at will.

Once again, the Supreme Court has issued an extreme ruling, this time upholding President Trump’s right to order mass firings of government employees, in plain violation of Congress’s authority. And once again, the Court relied on the so-called shadow docket, issuing an emergency procedure staying lower-court injunctions, allowing the justices to duck coming to terms with the underlying constitutional question of separation of powers.

On February 11, Trump issued an executive order seeking to reduce the size of the federal government through so-called reductions in force. This prompted a lawsuit by a broad coalition of unions, nonprofits, and local governments.

Federal judge Susan Illston, a Clinton appointee, sided with the plaintiffs and ordered a temporary pause in the mass layoffs pending an authoritative Supreme Court decision on the merits. “As history demonstrates, the President may broadly restructure federal agencies only when authorized by Congress,” Illston wrote.

The administration immediately appealed. On June 2, a three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit upheld Judge Illston’s ruling. The administration then sought an emergency stay from the Supreme Court.

Tuesday’s high court ruling lifting the lower-court injunctions was the logical corollary to the high court’s June 27 procedural ruling in Trump v. CASA, holding that district court injunctions may not be applied nationwide. But that case, like this one, continues the Supreme Court’s cowardly gambit of using emergency stays and procedural gimmicks to duck addressing the underlying constitutional issues.

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