Supreme Court Allows Trump’s Mass Firings at the Department of Education

The court’s three liberal justices dissented.

Trump holds up a signed executive order alongside Secretary of Education Linda McMahon.
President Donald Trump holds up a signed executive order alongside Secretary of Education Linda McMahon in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana) Jose Luis Magana/AP

The Supreme Court has allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to carry out mass layoffs at the Department of Education, blocking a federal judge’s ruling that had previously halted them.

Monday’s unsigned order was in response to an emergency application from the Trump administration. Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.

This decision “hands the Executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out,” Sotomayor wrote in a scathing dissent, joined by Kagan and Jackson. “The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naive, but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave.”