Justice Department seeks to block the injunction that held off the large-scale layoffs
The Trump administration has asked the US Supreme Court to halt a judicial order that prevented the mass job cuts that would have laid off thousands of federal workers under the president's plan to downsize the workforce.
The US Justice Department filed the request after the preliminary injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Susan Illston prevented 20 agencies from carrying out Trump's mass reductions-in-force (RIF) directive.
The administration appealed the case at the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which denied the request last week, saying Trump's order "exceeds the president's supervisory powers under the Constitution."
But the Justice Department argued in its filing to the Supreme Court that the "Constitution does not erect a presumption against presidential control of agency staffing."
"The president does not need special permission from Congress to exercise core Article II powers," it added, as quoted by Reuters.
It further argued that the order interferes with the Executive Branch's internal operations, CBS reported.
"More concretely, the injunction has brought to a halt numerous in-progress RIFs at more than a dozen federal agencies, sowing confusion about what RIF-related steps agencies may take and compelling the government to retain — at taxpayer expense — thousands of employees whose continuance in federal service the agencies deem not to be in the government and public interest," the filing read, as quoted by the news outlet.
Trump's plan for large-scale workforce cuts was announced in February. It led to various federal agencies cutting their workforce, or making plans to do so, before the Illston block.
Illston said that presidents do not have the authority to seek changes to federal agencies, noting that Congress creates, funds, and gives duties to federal agencies.
"Agencies may not conduct large-scale reorganisations and reductions in force in blatant disregard of Congress's mandates, and a president may not initiate large-scale executive branch reorganisation without partnering with Congress," the judge wrote, as quoted by CBS.
The block covered agencies including the Social Security Administration, the Departments of State, Treasury, Commerce, Veterans Affairs, among others.
