Trump asks Supreme Court to step in for mass government firings

Donald Trump is in the fight of his life to see how much power the president has in regard to mass government firings.

Trump has been back and forth in the courts over the termination of nearly 25,000 federal workers, and now he is asking the Supreme Court to step in.

The Memo

Not long after Trump took office, the Office of Personnel Management announced that all probationary workers would be separated.

I have already gone on record that I did not support his mass firings for several reasons. The first of which was that not all probationary workers were actually new employees, as they could have been people reassigned to new departments.

I have always stated that I believe the Secretaries and Directors should have been permitted to evaluate positions and staffing, then decide on cuts in their respective departments.

After the initial memo, the OPM adjusted its original announcement to stress that exact point, stating, "Please note that, by this memorandum, OPM is not directing agencies to take any specific performance-based actions regarding probationary employees. Agencies have ultimate decision-making authority over, and responsibility for, such personnel actions." However, the firing of the staffers was not rescinded.

Trump Loses in Court

So far, this case has gone before a lower-level court and an appellate court, and Trump has lost both cases.

There was also a second judge who blocked the firings, citing federal rules in place for mass government layoffs. U.S. District Judge James Bredar, an Obama appointee, stated, “In this case, the government conducted massive layoffs, but it gave no advance notice. It claims it wasn’t required to because, it says, it dismissed each one of these thousands of probationary employees for ‘performance’ or other individualized reasons.

“On the record before the Court, this isn’t true. There were no individualized assessments of employees. They were all just fired. Collectively.”

What stuns me about all of this is that Trump never even bothered to consider the rules in place and just fired from the hip with these firings. And to be clear, I 100% believe we need to cut government staffing, but it should be done based on performance, not just time served, as there could be some diamonds in the rough among these probationary employees.

Trump Goes to Supreme Court

Trump is now asking the Supreme Court to take up the case, hoping that with a 6-3 lean, he will get approval for these mass firings, but I doubt that is going to be the case, specifically because of the rules in place regarding federal employees.

It’s not that they cannot be fired, but they need to have cause. Even so, Solicitor General Sarah Harris put the brunt of this on the lower-level judges, stating, “That is no way to run a government. This Court should stop the ongoing assault on the constitutional structure before further damage is wrought.”

The filing by the Trump administration to the Supreme Court added, “Those orders have sown chaos as the Executive Branch scrambles to meet immediate compliance deadlines by sending huge sums of government money out the door, reinstating thousands of lawfully terminated workers, undoing steps to restructure Executive Branch agencies, and more.”

I really hate to disappoint everyone on this, but I don’t think this will end well for Trump because even though we have a 6-3 edge, I think most of the judges are going to side with the rules in place regarding federal employee firings and mass layoffs. The good news is that the issue will be settled, and Trump and his administration can figure out how to move forward from here to trim down the government.