BREAKING: Supreme Court allows Trump admin to fire Department of Ed employees

The Supreme Court granted a request for a stay on Monday, allowing the Trump administration to continue firing workers at the Department of Education and continue efforts to dismantle it. 

The stay was granted in a 6-3 decision, with Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown-Jackson, and Elena Kagan dissenting. The three justices wrote, "When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it." The Supreme Court lifted the preliminary injunction granted by the US District Court of the District of Massachusetts in May, which ordered that around 1,400 employees be reinstated. 

"The President must take care that the laws are faithfully executed, not set out to dismantle them. That basic rule undergirds our Constitution’s separation of powers. Yet today, the majority rewards clear defiance of that core principle with emergency relief. Because I cannot condone such abuse of our equitable authority, I respectfully dissent," the dissent, written by Sotomayor, stated.

US District Judge Myong Joun in May blocked the administration from carrying out a March 1 reduction in force, Trump’s March 20 executive order directing the Secretary of Education to take "all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education," and Trump’s March 21 order directing the transfer of federal student loan management to the Small Business Administration.

The March 11 reduction-in-force directive stated that around 2,183 employees, or around 50 percent of the department’s 4,133 employees, would be cut. 

"The record abundantly reveals that Defendants’ true intention is to effectively dismantle the Department without an authorizing statute,” Joun, a Biden appointee, wrote. "The idea that Defendants’ actions are merely a ‘reorganization’ is plainly not true."