Check That Lawlessness

This case arises out of the President's unilateral efforts to eliminate a Cabinet-level agency established by Congress nearly half a century ago: the Department of Education.  As Congress mandated, the Department plays a vital role in this Nation's education system, safeguarding equal access to learning and channeling billions of dollars to schools and students across the country each year.   

Only Congress has the power to abolish the Department.  The Executive's task, by contrast, is to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." U. S. Const., Art. II, §3.  Yet, by executive fiat, the President ordered the Secretary of Education to "take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department." Exec. Order No. 14242, 90 Fed. Reg. 13679 (2025). Consistent with that Executive Order, Secretary Linda McMahon gutted the Department's work force, firing over 50 percent of its staff overnight.  In her own words, that mass termination served as "the first step on the road to a total shutdown" of the Department. 

When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary's duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it.  Two lower courts rose to the occasion, preliminarily enjoining the mass firings while the litigation remains ongoing.  Rather than maintain the status quo, however, this Court now intervenes, lifting the injunction and permitting the Government to proceed with dismantling the Department.  That decision is 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.  Unable to join in this misuse of our emergency docket, I respectfully dissent.

-- Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor, with whom Justice Kagan and Justice Jackson join, dissenting in Linda McMahon, Secretary of Education, v New York, on application for stay, in which the majority allowed the Trump administration to move forward with depopulating the Department of Education (14 July 2025)