The Supreme Court on Monday allowed President Trump to resume efforts to dismantle the Department of Education in an apparent 6-3 vote along ideological lines, lifting a judge’s order to reinstate hundreds of employees terminated in mass layoffs.
The administration’s victory enables the president to move closer to fulfilling of one of his major campaign promises to oversee the elimination of the Education Department, which was created in the 1970s.
The majority did not explain its reasoning, as is typical in emergency decisions. The court’s three Democratic-appointed justices publicly dissented, calling their colleagues’ ruling “indefensible.”
“It hands the Executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.