It argued that a federal judge’s order blocking the the administration’s efforts in 21 agencies should be overturned.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to lift a lower court order blocking the Trump administration from carrying out mass layoffs at a number of federal agencies.
The order, issued by U.S. District Judge Susan Illston last week, temporarily halted the administration’s efforts to shrink and reshape the federal government. Illston had directed numerous federal agencies to stop acting on President Donald Trump’s workforce executive order signed in February and subsequent memos issued by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked the court to quickly put her ruling on hold, telling the nine justices that the federal judge had overstepped her authority.
“It does all of that based on the extraordinary view that the President lacks authority to direct executive agencies how to exercise their statutory powers to conduct large-scale personnel actions within the Executive Branch,” Sauer wrote in the application on behalf of the administration.
Illston’s order, which will expire next week unless she extends it further, said that the executive branch needs help from Congress to carry out large-scale workforce reductions.
“It is the prerogative of presidents to pursue new policy priorities and to imprint their stamp on the federal government. But to make large-scale overhauls of federal agencies, any president must enlist the help of his co-equal branch and partner, the Congress,” Illston wrote earlier this month.
Her order further stipulated that DOGE, OPM, and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) lack the authority to tell other federal agencies to carry out layoffs. It applied to layoffs at the departments of Agriculture, Energy, Labor, State, the Interior, the Treasury, and Veterans Affairs, as well as the National Science Foundation, Small Business Administration, Social Security Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
But in the administration’s Friday petition, Sauer wrote that Illston’s order is too broad and infringes on the rights of the executive branch.
