The Supreme Court on July 14 allowed President Donald Trump to move forward with dismantling the Department of Education by firing almost 1,400 employees.
In a brief unsigned ruling, the justices blocked the order issued in May by U.S. District Judge Myong Joun, who had concluded that the Trump administration’s “true intention is to effectively dismantle the Department” even though in his view it lacked the power to do so.
The court did not explain its decision.
Three justices – Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson – dissented from the ruling.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, in a 19-page opinion that was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Sotomayor called the court’s decision “indefensible,” writing that it “hands the Executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out.”
“The majority,” she said, “is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naïve, but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave.”
In her dissent, Sotomayor emphasized that, until this year, “Presidents have recognized they lack the unilateral authority to eradicate a Department that Congress has tasked with fulfilling statutory duties.”
But President Donald Trump, she said, “has made clear that he intends to close the Department without Congress’s involvement.”