Trump Asks Supreme Court to Remove Block on Mass Firings

The administration said Trump didn’t need permission from Congress to superintend personnel decisions.

The U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on May 19, 2025. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

President Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to intervene after a federal judge blocked his executive order aimed at preparing agencies for firings otherwise known as “reductions in force.”

“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,” U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in an emergency application on June 2.

A group of local governments, unions, and nonprofits had sued, alleging that the Trump administration failed to obtain congressional authorization for its plans to transform the executive branch.

They had a temporary win in May, when U.S. District Judge Susan Illston blocked Trump’s executive order directing agencies to prepare for reductions in force.

Subsequent to the executive order, a memo from the Office of Management and Budget directed agencies to submit reorganization plans and progress reports to it and to the Office of Personnel Management for review.

Illston blocked that memo as well. She said that although courts shouldn’t “micromanage the vast federal workforce,” they “must sometimes act to preserve the proper checks and balances between the three branches of government.”

This isn’t the first time that the case made its way to the Supreme Court. Sauer filed an emergency appeal in May after Illston’s initial order. After she extended that order and upgraded it to something firmer, Sauer withdrew his emergency appeal and said the administration would fight the case in an appeals court. On May 30, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit denied the administration’s request to halt the lower court’s block.

The Supreme Court has already issued an order temporarily allowing the Trump administration to not reinstate thousands of probationary employees. That case focused on a lower court order affecting 16,000 probationary employees.

Among other things, Sauer said that Illston lacked jurisdiction to rule on the issue. Congress passed the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute, which allows the Federal Labor Relations Authority—another executive agency—to resolve labor disputes. Its decisions can also be reviewed by appeals courts.

Sauer suggested that Illston was sidestepping the Federal Labor Relations Authority with her order, which affected 19 agencies and 11 Cabinet departments. He added that the executive order and memo were legally sound. Both, he said, were “consistent with the long historical tradition of recognizing the federal government’s authority to conduct reductions in force.”

In her May 9 order, Illston stated that it might be too late for employees who go through the administrative process. By the time they return to work, she said, they might return to an empty agency. She added that “the claims here involve issues related to the appropriate distribution of authority to and within the executive branch, not the individual employee or labor disputes these two administrative bodies customarily handle.”

Tom Ozimek contributed to this report.