This week, the Supreme Court issued an order permitting the Trump administration to move forward with the elimination of some 1,400 Department of Education employees while the legal challenge to those discharges works its way through the courts.
On what grounds did the Court rule? No one knows.
The one-paragraph, unsigned order on Monday offered no reasoning. No explanation. No precedent. Once upon a time, unexplained orders granting relief were a rarity. According to astute court-watcher Steve Vladeck, Monday’s ruling is the Court’s seventh such order—all favoring the government—in the last ten weeks.
This has to stop.
On the merits, I’m probably more sympathetic than most constitutional law professors to the administration’s mass layoffs. While civil service statutes create almost impenetrable protections when an individual federal employee is fired, large-scale “reductions in force” are permitted. Some think that’s a crazy state of affairs—how can firing one person be harder than firing thousands?—but that’s the law.
Does the court agree with me? Maybe. But we don’t know, because the court’s order said nothing about whether the justices thought the firings were lawful. It didn’t say whether the court thought the plaintiffs lacked standing. It didn’t say whether the lower court had jurisdiction. It didn’t say anything at all.
That’s not law. That’s just an exercise of power.
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Author: Jed Rubenfeld
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