Sonia Sotomayor Warns of ‘Grave’ Danger as Supreme Court Lets Trump Move Against Public Education

In a sharply worded dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor is making it clear: the Supreme Court just enabled Trump to dismantle public education. And she’s not staying quiet about it.

After the conservative-majority court lifted an injunction blocking the Trump administration from laying off 1,400 employees at the Department of Education, the first Latina on the Supreme Court wrote a 19-page dissent calling the ruling “indefensible.”

And she didn’t hold back.

The Supreme Court just cleared the way for Trump to gut the Department of Education

On Monday, the Supreme Court granted Trump’s request to move forward with massive layoffs in the Department of Education. As HuffPost reported, this comes despite the fact that Congress, not the Executive, created the department. Furthermore, Congress never voted to abolish it.

The ruling allows the Trump administration to move forward with executive orders and terminations. These could effectively render the agency nonfunctional. Trump has been clear about his goal. On the campaign trail and in office, he repeatedly stated he wanted to shutter the department entirely.

According to The New Republic, Education Secretary Linda McMahon called the layoffs “the first step in a total shutdown.”

The court issued its decision through its emergency docket. The majority offered no written explanation.

Sonia Sotomayor called the ruling “a grave threat” to the Constitution

In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor warned that the ruling “hands the Executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out.”

She called the majority “either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naive.” And added, “Either way, the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave,” as quoted by HuffPost.

Sotomayor criticized the Court’s use of the emergency docket, calling it a “misuse.” She also warns that the majority is rewarding Trump’s “clear defiance” of constitutional obligations.

“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,” she wrote.

Her dissent was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

What’s at stake for students and civil rights

Sotomayor wrote that dismantling the Department of Education will “delay or deny educational opportunities” and leave students vulnerable to “discrimination, sexual assault, and other civil rights violations without the federal resources Congress intended.”

The Trump administration argued that the layoffs were meant to “cut bureaucratic bloat.” But according to Sotomayor, the “record unambiguously refutes that account.” She cited Trump’s own instructions to Education Secretary McMahon that she was being nominated to “put herself out of a job.”

“The President must take care that the laws are faithfully executed, not set out to dismantle them,” she wrote, according to Newsweek.

Sonia Sotomayor says the Court is failing its duty

In her dissent, Sotomayor emphasized that it is the role of the Judiciary to uphold constitutional checks on Executive power. “Congress created the Department, and only Congress can abolish it,” she wrote.

She said that two lower courts had “risen to the occasion” by pausing the mass terminations while the case proceeded through the legal system. The Supreme Court, she argued, undermined that process and “permitted the Government to proceed with dismantling the Department.”

“The majority apparently deems it more important to free the Government from paying employees it had no right to fire than to avert these very real harms while the litigation continues,” she added.

An uncertain and frightening future

Secretary McMahon has already announced the department will proceed with its “reduction in force,” which she framed as a return of education powers to the states.

Skye Perryman, CEO of Democracy Forward and counsel for the plaintiffs, told Newsweek the ruling was “devastating” to public education and said the administration’s actions remain unconstitutional.

Sotomayor, meanwhile, warned of the long-term damage to democracy if courts allow the Executive to dismantle entire federal agencies without Congressional approval.

“Because I cannot condone such abuse of our equitable authority, I respectfully dissent,” she concluded.