Supreme Court lets Trump move forward with firing hundreds of Education Department workers

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court gave the Trump administration the green light Monday to forge ahead with layoffs of more than 1,300 workers at the Department of Education and continue its effort to dismantle the agency completely.

In an unsigned order, the justices lifted a Boston federal judge’s ruling that blocked the firings and ordered the White House to hire back those who had already been dismissed.

All three of the court’s liberal justices dissented from the order, which sends the dispute back to the Boston-based 1st Circuit Court of Appeals.

In a dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that allowing the White House to go forward with the dismissals “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 naïve, but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave.”

US District Judge Myong Joun had ruled that congressional approval was required for such a large-scale dismissal of staff — and rejected the administration’s argument that it was merely reorganizing the department.