3 weeks ago
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The Trump administration has filed an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court, requesting that it immediately intervene and allow the administration to continue with plans to reduce the size of the federal workforce.
US Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in the appeal to the Supreme Court that the US District Court for the Northern District of California’s "entered a nationwide injunction that bars nearly the entire Executive Branch—19 agencies, including 11 Cabinet departments—from implementing an Executive Order that directs agencies to prepare plans to execute lawful reductions in the size of the federal workforce."
"That injunction rests on the indefensible premise that the President needs explicit statutory authorization from Congress to exercise his core Article II authority to superintend the internal personnel decisions of the Executive Branch," he wrote, later adding, "the President does not need special permission from Congress to exercise core Article II powers."
The California injunction "violates these bedrock principles and other well-established doctrines."
Sauer noted that the Supreme Court had "recently intervened to stop a district court from undoing the effects of the lawful large-scale termination of probationary government employees. It should take the same course here, where the injunction sweeps far more broadly— to cover most of the federal government—and even restricts the Executive in planning personnel actions pursuant to presidential direction."
The case relates to an executive order signed by Trump in February directing federal agencies to "promptly undertake preparations to initiate large-scale reductions in force (RIFs), consistent with applicable law" across the government. Around three months later, labor unions, advocacy groups, and local governments sued the president, executive departments, and other members of the federal government.
Sauer said that the high court should issue a stay on the California court’s injunction, "which suffers from multiple fatal flaws."
He wrote that the respondents in the case cannot directly challenge the RIFs because the RIFs are "indisputably permitted by federal law," the order signed by Trump directed the RIFs only as consistent with applicable law, and "many of the RIFs have not yet been finalized," among other issues.
"More concretely, the injunction has brought to a halt numerous in-progress RIFs at more than a dozen federal agencies, sowing confusion about what RIF-related steps agencies may take and compelling the government to retain – at taxpayer expense – thousands of employees whose continuance in federal service the agencies deem not to be in the government and public interest," Sauer wrote.
Trump Admin Supreme Court Appeal by Hannah Nightingale on Scribd
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