The Trump Administration, with the help of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is bringing mass layoffs to variety of federal government agencies — from the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to the National Weather Service (NWS). And President Donald Trump has proposed or contemplated eliminating some agencies altogether, including the U.S. Department of Education and the Federal Emergency Management Association (FEMA) — although he appears to be backing down, at least temporarily, from abolishing FEMA following the deadly floods that imperiled Central Texas over the 4th of July Weekend.
Critics of Trump's proposal to eliminate the Department of Education are arguing that not only it bad policy — it's a matter that requires a full vote in both houses of Congress and can't be decided by the White House alone. But on Monday, July 14, the U.S. Supreme Court green-lighted Trump's plans to discontinue that agency.
In an article published by The Atlantic on July 15, legal expert Quinta Jurecic is highly critical of SCOTUS' GOP-appointed supermajority for handing down that ruling without offering a detailed "explanation."
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"The Supreme Court is allowing Donald Trump to dismantle the Department of Education, but it won't say why," Jurecic complains. "Yesterday — almost exactly a week after the Court lifted a lower court's block on Trump's plans to fire thousands of federal employees — a majority of the justices decided to give the president the go-ahead for a different set of mass layoffs. Last week, the Court provided a handful of sentences that vaguely gestured at why it might have allowed the (Trump) Administration to move forward. This week, it offered nothing at all."
Jurecic continues, "There's something taunting, almost bullying, about this lack of reasoning, as if the conservative supermajority is saying to the country: You don't even deserve an explanation. Whereas last week's case involved orders to lay off employees from across the entire federal government, this week's involves just the Education Department. Over the course of his 2024 campaign and in the first few months of his second term, Trump repeatedly announced his plans to close the agency. The (Education) Department was 'a big con job,' he told reporters in February, and he would 'like to close it immediately.'"
Like FEMA, the Department of Education was established in 1979 during the late Jimmy Carter's presidency. Because the Education Department was created by an act of Congress, Jurecic argues, it requires an act of Congress to be abolished. And the High Court, according to Jurecic, is undermining the authority of the U.S. federal government's legislative branch without adequately explaining why.
"The executive branch, at least theoretically, did not have the unilateral authority to abolish the Education Department, which was created by an act of Congress in 1979," Jurecic emphasizes. "A coalition of states, school districts, and unions sued, and a federal district court temporarily blocked the (Trump) Administration from moving forward. That court order required the Department to rehire employees already laid off, pointing to both the Constitution and a statutory prohibition against 'arbitrary and capricious' actions by federal agencies…. Despite a frustrated dissent from the Court's three liberal justices, the majority's unsigned emergency ruling allowed Trump to carry out his plans while the litigation in the lower courts continues."
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Quinta Jurecic's full article for The Atlantic is available at this link (subscription required).