Supreme court lifts order blocking Trump’s federal layoffs, paving way for mass job cuts – US politics live | Trump administration

The supreme court has cleared the way for Donald Trump’s administration to resume carrying out mass job cuts and the restructuring of agencies, key elements of his campaign to downsize and reshape the federal government.

The justices lifted San Francisco-based US district judge Susan Illston’s 22 May order that had blocked large-scale federal layoffs called “reductions in force” affecting potentially hundreds of thousands of jobs, while litigation in the case proceeds.

Workforce reductions were planned at the US departments of agriculture, commerce, health and human services, state, treasury, veterans affairs and more than a dozen other agencies.

Illston wrote in her ruling that Trump had exceeded his authority in ordering the downsizing, siding with a group of unions, non-profits and local governments that challenged the administration.

“As history demonstrates, the president may broadly restructure federal agencies only when authorized by Congress,” Illston wrote.

The judge blocked the agencies from carrying out mass layoffs and limited their ability to cut or overhaul federal programs. She also ordered the reinstatement of workers who had lost their jobs, though she delayed implementing this portion of her ruling while the appeals process plays out.

Illston’s ruling was the broadest of its kind against the government overhaul being pursued by Trump and Doge.

The San Francisco-based ninth US circuit court of appeals in a 2-1 ruling on 30 May denied the administration’s request to halt the judge’s ruling.

It said the administration had not shown that it would suffer an irreparable injury if the judge’s order remained in place and that the plaintiffs were likely to prevail in their lawsuit.

The ruling prompted the justice department’s 2 June emergency request to the supreme court to halt Illston’s order.

Controlling the personnel of federal agencies “lies at the heartland” of the president’s executive branch authority, the justice department said in its filing to the supreme court.

“The constitution does not erect a presumption against presidential control of agency staffing, and the president does not need special permission from Congress to exercise core Article II powers,” the filing said, referring to the constitution’s section delineating presidential authority.

The plaintiffs urged the supreme court to deny the request. Allowing the Trump administration to move forward with its “breakneck reorganization”, they wrote, would mean that “programs, offices and functions across the federal government will be abolished, agencies will be radically downsized from what Congress authorized, critical government services will be lost and hundreds of thousands of federal employees will lose their jobs”.