[Breitbart] The Supreme Court issued a 6-3 ruling on Monday allowing President Donald Trump’s Department of Education to resume efforts to slash its workforce in half.
The decision reverses a lower court ruling ordering the reinstatement of Department of Education employees cut loose in mass layoffs, and ultimately allows Education Secretary Linda McMahon to continue her mission of winding down the department.
The Department of Education announced in March that it was reducing its workforce by half in an effort to streamline the department and cut down on unnecessary bureaucracy.
Before the cuts, the Department of Education had 4,133 total staff, a number senior department officials said “exist[ed] largely to oversee contractors, add strings, and in many cases do duplicative efforts across the department.” Senior department officials said at the time the cuts would not impact student aid, the rollout of FAFSA by October 1, funding for special-needs students, Civil Rights investigations, and other functions statutorily mandated by Congress.
U.S. District Judge Myong Joun blocked the department’s downsizing effort in May, ruling that the administration needed congressional authorization. Joun ordered the department to reinstate approximately 1,400 workers who had been terminated.
The majority did not issue an opinion to accompany the order, which is not out of the ordinary. However, the court’s three liberal-leaning justices dissented, decrying the ruling as “indefensible.”
“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,” penned Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. 
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