Federal agencies across government can resume laying off their employees en masse after the Supreme Court reversed a court order that barred those reductions, with several agencies likely to move swiftly to start cutting staff. 

The court once again ruled in favor of the Trump administration in its push to expand the president’s power to slash agency workforce rolls as he sees fit after it reversed a lower court order that impacted most major federal departments. Dozens of reduction-in-force actions were held up by the now-defunct injunction and agencies have been working behind the scenes to quickly resume those activities once that block fell. 

The case landed at the Supreme Court after a district judge in California ruled in favor of the unions, municipalities and advocacy groups that sued over Trump’s workforce reduction plans and an appeals court subsequently allowed that ruling to remain in place. 

Those plaintiffs argued the Trump administration must receive congressional approval for its reorganization plans, including those seeking to lay off federal workers. Trump circumvented that obligation by issuing an executive order—and subsequent implementation guidance from the Office of Personnel Management and the Office of Management and Budget—calling for mass layoffs, they said. 

Reversing the injunction, the plaintiffs said, would amount to the Supreme Court “greenlighting the dismantling of the federal government in a manner that will later be effectively impossible to undo.” 

The administration countered that Trump was acting wholly within his powers and the ongoing injunction had prevented agencies from “taking needed steps to make the federal government and workforce more efficient.” Absent Supreme Court intervention, it added, the “intolerable state of affairs” would endure for months. 

John Sauer, the administration’s solicitor general, further noted that the high court previously stayed an injunction that blocked the administration from firing its probationary employees. 

Agencies that had already sent out RIF notices—such as the departments of Health and Human Services and Education—can now finalize the offboarding of thousands of staff. The departments of Interior, Agriculture and State, among others, are now expected to quickly send out notices of their own to thousands of employees. The exact timing for those personnel moves are not yet clear. 

All the rulings on the case to date have taken place on a preliminary or emergency basis, meaning it still must still be argued on the merits. That process will take months to play out, however, and employees will be separated in the meantime. Should the case ultimately make its way back to the high court, it has demonstrated that it sympathizes with the administration’s perspective.