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The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to lift a judge’s order blocking mass layoffs at 21 federal agencies.
It marks the latest bid by the Justice Department to rein in district judges who’ve issued nationwide injunctions blocking President Trump’s policies. The department said the lower ruling “far exceeds anything necessary to remediate the parties’ putative injuries.”
U.S. District Judge Susan Illston, an appointee of former President Clinton who serves in San Francisco, earlier this month temporarily blocked the various agencies from conducting a reduction in force, known as a RIF, and ordered the government to produce various documents about the efforts.
“It does all of that based on the extraordinary view that the President lacks authority to direct executive agencies how to exercise their statutory powers to conduct large-scale personnel actions within the Executive Branch,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in the application.
The administration similarly asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to lift the judge’s order, and that court set a written briefing schedule that extends through next week. Frustrated with the schedule, which wouldn’t wrap up almost until Illston’s order is set to expire, Sauer said the Supreme Court’s immediate intervention was necessary.
It marks the Trump administration’s 15th high court emergency appeal since taking office, a staggering number that has caused a pileup of applications as the justices get into decision season for its normal cases.
It comes one day after the court heard oral arguments on the administration’s bid to narrow three nationwide injunctions blocking the president’s executive order restricting birthright citizenship. Sauer said Illston’s ruling at a minimum should be narrowed for similar reasons.
Sauer went on to note that the Supreme Court previously lifted a separate San Francisco-based judge’s block on mass federal worker firings, which concerned probationary employees.
“It should take the same course here, where the order sweeps far more broadly—to cover most of the federal government—and restrains the Executive from even planning reductions in force pursuant to presidential direction,” Sauer told the court.
Minutes after it was filed, Trump posted to X some of his strongest criticism yet of the Supreme Court since retaking the White House.
“THE SUPREME COURT IS BEING PLAYED BY THE RADICAL LEFT LOSERS, WHO HAVE NO SUPPORT, THE PUBLIC HATES THEM, AND THEIR ONLY HOPE IS THE INTIMIDATION OF THE COURT, ITSELF. WE CAN’T LET THAT HAPPEN TO OUR COUNTRY!” Trump wrote.
