On Monday, the Trump administration filed an emergency appeal calling on the Supreme Court to immediately intervene and allow them to proceed with plans to slash the size of the federal workforce.
U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that the lower court ruling is “flawed,” and hinges on an “indefensible premise,” which is that the executive brach needs Congressional authorization to make personnel decisions, such as the Reductions in Force, or RIFs.
The district court order in question had barred the Trump administration from carrying out its large-scale RIFs at 21 federal agencies, and prevented the administration from taking other, related actions – such as placing federal employees at those agencies on leave, or proceeding with job cuts that had already been in motion under previous RIFs.
Sauer argued to the Supreme Court that the lower court ruling “interferes with the executive branch’s internal operations and unquestioned legal authority to plan and carry out RIFs, and does so on a government-wide scale.”
“More concretely, the injunction has brought to a halt numerous in-progress RIFs at more than a dozen federal agencies, sowing confusion about what RIF-related steps agencies may take and compelling the government to retain – at taxpayer expense – thousands of employees whose continuance in federal service the agencies deem not to be in the government and public interest,” Sauer said.
The emergency appeal marks the 18th emergency appeal that lawyers for the Trump administration have submitted to the Supreme Court since Trump was sworn in to his second White House term.
It comes as the administration and federal judges have sparred in court over a number of executive orders and actions from the president, teeing up a high-stakes clash over the powers of the judiciary and the executive branch.
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