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