The Supreme Court handed the Trump administration a massive victory on July 8, 2025, granting an 8–1 emergency stay in Trump v. American Federation of Government Employees, No. 24A1174 — clearing the way for the president to move forward with large-scale reductions in force and restructuring of the federal executive branch. This is a major win for Article II, for the separation of powers, and frankly, for everyone who believes that elected officials — not career bureaucrats — should be running the government.
What the Lower Courts Did Wrong
The litigation began when a coalition of federal labor unions and other plaintiffs sued to block Executive Order 14210, which directed agencies to plan large-scale workforce reorganizations and reductions in force. A federal district judge in the Northern District of California entered a preliminary injunction on May 22, 2025, effectively freezing the president’s restructuring efforts. The Ninth Circuit, in a 2–1 decision, upheld that injunction. In my view, both courts got this fundamentally wrong.
The argument against the president essentially boils down to this: Congress has historically been consulted before major government reorganizations, so Trump’s departure from that “settled practice” must be unlawful. But practice is not law. Practice is not the Constitution. And the text of Article II — the actual governing document every federal official swears to uphold — could not be clearer.
What Article II Actually Says
Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution vests the entire executive power of the United States in a single person: the president. Not in a panel of district judges. Not in the Ninth Circuit. Not in the American Federation of Government Employees. In the president.
That textual command is exactly what the Supreme Court relied on when it granted the stay. The Court held that the government is “likely to succeed on its argument that the executive order and the memorandum are lawful.” That is a strong statement. Eight justices — including both remaining liberal justices — signed onto that conclusion. The administrative state does not get a veto over the person the Constitution designates as its boss.
Sotomayor Concurred — Read That Again
Here is the detail that deserves far more attention than it has gotten. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one of the Court’s reliable liberals, concurred in granting the stay. She wrote:
“I agree with Justice Jackson that the president cannot restructure federal agencies in a manner inconsistent with congressional mandates. Here, however, the relevant executive order directs agencies to plan reorganizations and reductions in force consistent with applicable law. And the resulting joint memorandum from the Office of Management and Budget and Office of Personnel Management reiterates as much.”
That is a justice who is not reflexively pro-Trump by any stretch of the imagination, acknowledging that the White House lawyers wrote this correctly. When the executive order and implementing memorandum expressly commit to acting within the law, the premise for enjoining the entire effort evaporates. The Trump legal team got the drafting right, and it mattered.
Jackson’s Lone Dissent — and What It Reveals
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented alone. She could not pull Justice Kagan or Justice Sotomayor over to her side — a telling fact in itself. Her dissent argues that presidents who want to reorganize the government must first obtain congressional authorization, citing a “settled practice” over the past century. She wrote:
“Under our Constitution, Congress has the power to establish administrative agencies and detail their functions. Thus, over the past century, presidents who have attempted to reorganize the federal government have first obtained authorization from Congress to do so. The president sharply departed from that settled practice.”
With respect, “settled practice” is not a source of constitutional law. It is not in the text. It is not in the structure. And the eight justices who sided against her apparently agree. What Justice Jackson is really arguing is that inertia — the accumulated habits of prior administrations — should bind future presidents more tightly than the actual words of Article II. That is a remarkably weak foundation for striking down a presidential directive.
The Second Amendment Angle: Opportunity Cost
I want to be honest about what this Trump winning streak costs us on the Second Amendment front. I am genuinely pleased every time the Court correctly applies Article II and reins in rogue lower courts. But there is a real opportunity cost to consider.
The Supreme Court is handling 60–70 cases on its regular merits docket — and then a separate stack of 40–50 emergency applications driven almost entirely by lawsuits against the Trump administration. Every one of those emergency stays consumes the Court’s political capital and institutional bandwidth. My read is that this emergency docket load is at least partly why the Court denied cert in Snope v. Brown, No. 24-203, the Maryland AR-15 ban case, back on June 2, 2025.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh issued a statement with that cert denial signaling that the Court “should and presumably will address the AR-15 issue soon, in the next Term or two.” I take Kavanaugh at his word — he knows the internal dynamics of that building better than most. But I do not think these Trump wins are cost-free for us. The justices, in my view, are managing a finite docket of high-profile controversies, and the crush of executive-power emergency applications is pushing our Second Amendment cases back by a year or two.
That is not a reason to oppose the Trump administration’s legal victories — they are legally correct and constitutionally sound. It is simply the reality on the ground, and my job here is to give you accurate information, not comfortable information.
This article is based on analysis by Professor Mark W. Smith, constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner 2nd Amendment channel. Watch the original video here. This does not constitute legal advice.