In a significant victory for the Trump administration, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of President Donald Trump’s push to overhaul the Department of Education, allowing the termination of nearly 1,400 federal employees. The decision clears the way for Trump’s long-promised effort to rein in what many conservatives see as a bloated, unaccountable bureaucracy that pushes left-wing agendas.
🚨🚨BREAKING--BOOM: Trump scores another win at SCOTUS. 1/ pic.twitter.com/iQTnsrQdjH
— Margot Cleveland (@ProfMJCleveland) July 14, 2025
In an unsigned decision, the Supreme Court temporarily set aside a lower court’s ruling that had stopped President Trump’s plan from taking effect. This means the plan can proceed for now, even as the legal battle over it continues. Three liberal justices opposed the order, and the court halted an order from U.S. District Judge Myong Joun in Boston, who had blocked the layoffs and challenged the overall plan. Judge Joun warned that the layoffs “will likely cripple the department.”
However, a federal appeals court declined to pause his order while the administration pursued its appeal.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued that the majority effectively gave Trump the authority to undo laws passed by Congress simply by dismissing the employees responsible for enforcing them.
"The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naïve,” Sotomayor wrote, “but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is great.”
This follows the Supreme Court’s decision on July 8 to overturn a federal judge’s order that had temporarily halted the Trump administration’s staffing reductions and agency reorganization, giving new momentum to the president’s efforts to shrink and reshape the federal government.