The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a landmark ruling on Tuesday, July 8, 2025, that clears the path for President Donald Trump to implement a mass layoff of federal workers, overturning previous legal barriers.
In a 6-3 decision, the court struck down injunctions from lower courts that had halted Trump’s executive order issued in January 2025, which seeks to reclassify a significant portion of the federal workforce as “at-will” employees, thereby removing traditional civil service protections. The majority opinion, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, upheld the president’s authority under Article II to manage the executive branch, a ruling that has far-reaching implications for government employment.
The case, initiated by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and other unions representing over 2 million federal workers, argued that the reclassification violated the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act. The Supreme Court, however, found that the president’s discretion in workforce management supersedes these protections, though it did not specify the number of employees affected, leaving that to agency discretion.
Trump, who returned to office in January 2025, celebrated the decision as a step toward reducing government bureaucracy, promising to redirect savings to priority areas like border security and infrastructure. The AFGE has vowed to challenge the ruling through further legal action and organized protests scheduled for July 10 in Washington, D.C., expecting thousands of participants. The White House has indicated that affected agencies will submit layoff plans by late August, marking a significant policy shift.