Liberal justices on the conservative-majority Supreme Court have torn into the decision allowing Donald Trump to continue gutting the Department of Education.
In the latest win for the president from the nation’s highest court, the justices voted to lift a pause on a lower court’s decision that blocked the Trump administration from laying off nearly 1,400 DOE workers and shifting its functions to other agencies as part of federal cost-cutting plans.
As is standard in emergency applications, the Supreme Court offered no reasoning for its decision and did not disclose how each justice voted. But the divide was clear in a blistering 19-page dissent by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
“Only Congress has the power to abolish the department,” Sotomayor 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.”
Sotomayor blasted the conservative majority’s decision to intervene in lower court rulings halting the mass firings at the DOE amid ongoing litigation.
“That decision is indefensible,” she said. “It hands the executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out. 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.”
The Supreme Court, which includes three justices nominated by Trump—Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—has effectively paved the way for the entire department to be dismantled by allowing the administration to slash about one-third of its 4,100 workers.
By law, the DOE, created in 1979, cannot be shuttered entirely without the approval of Congress, which is unlikely since it would require 60 votes in the Senate, and that would need some Democratic support. Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon have instead sought to vastly downsize the DOE and shift its responsibilities elsewhere to avoid congressional approval.
The Supreme Court has already permitted Trump to continue his mass firings of federal workers, without consulting Congress first, and to freeze around $65 million in education funding intended to address teacher shortages and promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
Removing DEI programs and gutting the DOE were both proposed in Project 2025, a controversial 922-page manifesto by the conservative Heritage Foundation, outlining how a Republican administration could overhaul the federal government. Trump has repeatedly denied that his policies are influenced by Project 2025, despite multiple members of his Cabinet helping draft it.
Trump praised the latest favorable SCOTUS ruling on Truth Social.
“The Federal Government has been running our Education System into the ground, but we are going to turn it all around by giving the Power back to the PEOPLE,” the president wrote. “America’s Students will be the best, brightest, and most Highly Educated anywhere in the World. Thank you to the United States Supreme Court!”
