By: The Editorial Board – wsj.com – July 8, 2025

The Justices nix a lower-court universal injunction that presumed illegality.

Federal worker unions challenged a February executive order (Trump v. AFGE) directing agency heads to “promptly undertake preparations to initiate large-scale reductions in force (RIFs), consistent with applicable law.” A lower court in May blocked the EO, barring the President’s appointees from making plans on how to implement large-scale layoffs.

The Justices stayed the injunction in a pithy order, noting “the Government is likely to succeed on its argument that the Executive Order and Memorandum are lawful.” They also stressed that “we express no view on the legality of any Agency RIF and Reorganization Plan produced or approved pursuant to the Executive Order and Memorandum.”

Only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. The order includes “no mention of congressional buy-in,” she writes. But Congress does not control the executive branch. “What is at issue here,” Justice Jackson says, is whether the order effects “a massive restructuring of the Federal Government (the likes of which have historically required Congress’s approval), on the one hand, or minor workforce reductions consistent with existing law, on the other. One needs facts to answer that critical question.” Precisely.

That’s why it was premature for the lower court to enjoin the EO. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor stresses in a concurrence, the agency reorganization “plans themselves are not before this Court, at this stage, and we thus have no occasion to consider whether they can and will be carried out consistent with the constraints of law.”

It’s also not clear at this stage whether the plaintiffs will suffer a concrete injury. Federal Judge Susan Illston sought to tie the hands of agency heads on the presumption that their reorganizations might break the law. Justices are sending a useful message to lower courts not to reach legal conclusions before they even see what agencies are proposing.

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Source: The Supreme Court Says the President Can Fire People – WSJ