The Supreme Court sided with immigration judges on Friday, rebuffing the Trump administration for now in a case with possible implications for federal workers as the justices weigh expanding presidential firing power.
The decision is a technical step in a long-running case, but it touches on the effects of a series of high-profile firings under President Donald Trump. The justices let stand a ruling that raised questions about the Trump administration's handling of the federal workforce, though they also signaled that lower courts should move cautiously.
Immigration judges are federal employees, and the question at the center of the case is about whether they can sue to challenge a policy restricting their public speeches or if they are required to use a separate complaint system for the federal workforce.
Trump's Republican administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene after an appeals court found that Trump’s firings of top complaint system officials had raised questions about whether it's still working as intended.
The Justice Department said the firings are within the president’s power and the lower court had no grounds to raise questions. The solicitor general asked the Supreme Court to quickly freeze the ruling as he pushes to have the immigration judges’ case removed from federal court.
The justices declined, though they also said the Trump administration could return if the lower courts moved too fast. The justices have allowed most of Trump’s firings for now and are weighing whether to formally expand his legal power to fire independent agency officials by overturning job protections enshrined in a 90-year-old decision.
A union formerly representing immigration judges, who work for the Justice Department, first sued in 2020 to challenge a policy restricting what the judges can speak about in public. They say the case is a free-speech issue that belongs in federal court.
In recent months, Trump's administration has fired dozens of immigration judges seen by his allies as too lenient.
While the order is not a final decision, the case could eventually have implications for other federal workers who want to challenge firings in court rather than the employee complaint system now largely overseen by Trump appointees.
The decision comes after a series of wins for the Justice Department on the high court’s emergency docket. The court has sided with the Trump administration about two dozen times on issues ranging from immigration to federal funding.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon is expected to move quickly now that the Supreme Court has cleared the way for the Trump administration to continue unwinding her department.
The justices on Monday paused a lower court order that had halted nearly 1,400 layoffs and had called into question the legality of President Donald Trump’s plan to outsource the department’s operations to other agencies.
Now, Trump and McMahon are free to execute the layoffs and break up the department’s work among other federal agencies. Trump had campaigned on closing the department, and McMahon has said the department has one “final mission” to turn over its power to the states.
“The Federal Government has been running our Education System into the ground, but we are going to turn it all around by giving the Power back to the PEOPLE,” Trump said late Monday in a post on Truth Social. “Thank you to the United States Supreme Court!”
Department lawyers have already previewed McMahon’s next steps in court filings.
What happens with student loans, civil rights cases
Trump and McMahon have acknowledged only Congress has authority to close the Education Department fully, but both have suggested its core functions could be parceled out to different federal agencies.
Among the most important decisions is where to put management of federal student loans, a $1.6 trillion portfolio affecting nearly 43 million borrowers.
Trump in March suggested the Small Business Administration would take on federal student loans, but a June court filing indicated the Treasury Department is expected to take over the work. The Education Department said it had been negotiating a contract with Treasury but paused discussions when the court intervened. That work is now expected to proceed in coming days.
Under a separate arrangement, nine Education Department workers already have been detailed to Treasury, according to a court filing.
The department had also recently struck a deal to outsource the management of several grant programs for workforce training and adult education to the Department of Labor. The Education Department agreed to send $2.6 billion to Labor to oversee grants, which are distributed to states to be passed down to schools and colleges.
Combining workforce training programs at Education and Labor would “provide a coordinated federal education and workforce system,” according to the agreement.
Additional agreements are expected to follow with other agencies. At her Senate confirmation hearing, McMahon suggested that enforcement of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act could be handled by the Department of Health and Human Services. Civil rights work could be managed by the Justice Department, she said.
Democracy Forward, which represents plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said it will pursue “every legal option” to fight for children. The group’s federal court case is proceeding, but the Supreme Court’s emergency decision means the Education Department is allowed to downsize in the meantime.
“No court in the nation — not even the Supreme Court — has found that what the administration is doing is lawful,” said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of the group, in a statement.
Trump campaigned on a promise to close the agency, and in March ordered it to be wound down “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.” McMahon had already started a dramatic downsizing, laying off about 1,400 workers.
Education Department employees targeted by the layoffs have been on paid leave since March, according to a union that represents some of the agency’s staff. The lower court order had prevented the department from fully terminating them, though none had been allowed to return to work, according to the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252. Without the lower court order, the workers would have been terminated in early June.
The absence of those staffers already had caused problems in the office that handles student loans, said Melanie Storey, president and CEO of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. College financial aid staffers reported delays and breakdowns in federal systems — such as an hours-long outage on StudentAid.gov the day after departmental layoffs. Communication with the Education Department eroded, Storey said.
“It is concerning that the Court is allowing the Trump administration to continue with its planned reduction in force, given what we know about the early impact of those cuts on delivering much-needed financial assistance to students seeking a postsecondary education,” Storey said.
Gutting the Education Department will hinder the government’s ability to enforce civil rights laws, especially for girls, students with disabilities, LGBTQ+ students and students of color, said Gaylynn Burroughs, vice president at the National Women’s Law Center. Laid-off staff in the Office of Civil Rights were handling thousands of cases.
“Without enough staff and resources, students will face more barriers to educational opportunity and have fewer places to turn to when their rights are violated,” Burroughs said in a statement. “This is part of a coordinated plan by the Trump administration to dismantle the federal government and roll back hard-won civil rights protections.”
House Republicans were grasping late Thursday to formulate a response to the Trump administration’s handling of records in the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case, ultimately putting forward a resolution that carries no legal weight but nodded to the growing demand for greater transparency.
The House resolution, which could potentially be voted on next week, will do practically nothing to force the Justice Department to release more records in the case. Still, it showed how backlash from the Republican base is putting pressure on the Trump administration and roiling GOP lawmakers.
The House was held up for hours Thursday from final consideration of President Donald Trump’s request for about $9 billion in government funding cuts because GOP leaders were trying to respond to demands from their own ranks that they weigh in on the Epstein files. In the late evening they settled on the resolution as an attempt to simultaneously placate calls from the far-right for greater transparency and satisfy Trump, who has called the issue a “hoax” that his supporters should forget about.
Yet the House resolution was the latest demonstration of how practically no one is moving on from Attorney General Pam Bondi’s promises to publicly release documents related to Epstein. Since he was found dead in his New York jail cell in August 2019 following his arrest on sex trafficking charges, the well-connected financier has loomed large among conservatives and conspiracy theorists who have now lashed out at Trump and Bondi for declining to release more files in the case.
“The House Republicans are for transparency, and they’re looking for a way to say that they agree with the White House. We agree with the president. Everything he said about that, all the credible evidence should come out,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said Thursday afternoon.
Democrats vehemently decried the resolution’s lack of force. They have advanced their own legislation, with support from nine Republicans, that would require the Justice Department to release more information on the case.
Rep. Jim McGovern, who led the Democrats’ debate against the Republican resolution Thursday night, called it a “glorified press release” and “a fig leaf so they can move on from this issue.”
Under pressure from his own GOP members, Johnson had to demonstrate action on the Epstein files or risk having Republicans support the Democratic measures that would force the release of nearly all documents.
“The American people simply need to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said at a news conference. “Democrats didn’t put this into the public domain. The conspiracy theory provocateur-in-chief Donald Trump is the one, along with his extreme MAGA Republican associates, who put this whole thing into the public domain for years. And now they are reaping what they have sown.”
Still, Democrats, who hold minorities in both chambers, have relished the opportunity to make Republicans repeatedly block their attempts to force the Justice Department to release the documents.
Trump in recent years has suggested he would release more information about the investigation into Epstein, especially amid speculation over a supposed list of Epstein’s clients.
In February, the Justice Department released some government documents regarding the case, but there were no new revelations. After a months-long review of additional evidence, the department earlier this month released a video meant to prove that Epstein killed himself, but said no other files related to the case would be made public.
A White House spokeswoman said Thursday that Trump would not recommend a special counsel in the case. But later Thursday, the president said he had asked Bondi to seek the release of testimony from grand jury proceedings in the case.
