Ketanji Jackson’s wacko dissent to a Supreme Court order allowing agency heads to plan to trim their departments
It’s no secret that Joe Biden nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson to serve on the United States Supreme Court because she is a black woman.* In other words, she was not chosen for her judicial acumen, but for her political identity.
That goes a long way to explaining the absolutely lunatic dissent she issued to a Supreme Court order. That order stayed a California district court judge’s ruling blocking President Trump from ordering agency heads to produce plans for possible “Reductions in Force.” What makes Jackson’s dissent even crazier than its lack of any intellectual foundation is her open hostility to her fellow justices and the president.
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The American Federation of Government Employees (“AFGE”)—a union that exists only because John F. Kennedy made a promise to the mob (even Franklin Roosevelt wouldn’t unionize government employees)—was aghast at the thought that the federal bureaucracy might shrink. So, the AFGE hastened to a friendly court in Northern California, and the judge obliged by holding that EO 14210 was unlawful.
The Trump administration sought to have that order stayed pending appeal to the Ninth Circuit, a request both the district court and the Ninth Circuit refused. However, the Supreme Court granted the stay. What’s so amazing is that the Supreme Court’s order has an intelligent concurrence from Justice Sotomayor. Both the order and the concurrence make it clear that the question isn’t whether the ultimate plans to shrink the bureaucracy are legitimate.
Instead, as Sotomayor writes, Trump is likely to win on his right to issue an EO that “directs agencies to plan reorganizations and reductions in force ‘consistent with applicable law’...” He cannot be stopped from having the OMB and agency heads continue to make those plans.
The order is entirely correct. As the person charged with carrying out congressional laws, Trump is entirely within his right to work with agency heads to see that the laws are carried out efficiently in a way that benefits, not burdens, the American people.
Justice Jackson responded to this simple order with a 14-page dissent that not only seeks to rule on the substantive issue that was not before the Court (whether a president can fire federal employees) but also lambastes her colleagues and the President. For decades, I’ve read Supreme Court opinions that span centuries, and I’ve never seen anything like this.
Thus, in expressing her disdain for the order granting the stay, Jackson states that the trial court’s “temporary, practical, harm-reducing preservation of the status quo”—if one ignores the harm to taxpayers from continued federal bloat—“was no match for this Court’s demonstrated enthusiasm for greenlighting this President’s legally dubious actions in an emergency posture.” The lack of respect is stunning.
Jackson also accuses her colleagues of erring because of how “little this Court knows about what is actually happening on the ground.” In fact, the Court knows exactly what is happening: Trump asked the bureaucrats who report to him to draw up plans for him to end bloat harming taxpayers. And yes, his ultimate plan is fewer AFGE members, but that wasn’t the issue before the Court.
But to Jackson, “Put differently, from its lofty perch far from the facts or the evidence, this Court lacks the capacity to fully evaluate, much less responsibly override, reasoned lower court factfinding about what this challenged executive action actually entails.” And then, after that nasty slap, she adds, “I respectfully dissent...”
From there, Jackson goes on endlessly about why Trump is not allowed to streamline the efficiency and affordability of government operations in a way that might shrink the federal workforce and, by extension, the AFGE’s dues-paying membership. But again, everything she says is irrelevant because the issue is whether the president can ask his employees to draw up plans.
