Supreme Court buckling up for season of legal showdowns over Trump policies

The U.S. Justice Department is fast-tracking fights over President Donald Trump’s efforts to push the bounds of executive power, teeing up key issues for the Supreme Court in the coming weeks or even days.

On Monday, the Trump administration asked the justices to intervene to allow federal agencies to resume mass firings of probationary employees after a San Francisco judge ordered about 16,000 reinstated. Later in the day, an appeals court heard arguments in a Washington case Trump officials have vowed to take to the high court over the use of wartime powers to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members.

Two legal fights over Trump’s actions are now pending before the justices. At least a half dozen more are in a pipeline of requests to the high court that the Justice Department has pending before appellate courts to reinstate policies halted by lower courts, Bloomberg News found.

“The Supreme Court will get involved,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Fox News Sunday, referring to the court standoff over Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport suspected gang members.

Challenges to Trump’s policies on federal spending cuts, firing independent agency heads and immigration are moving rapidly through the U.S. legal system. The fast-tracked cases only involve requests for temporary halts – or stays – of lower court orders and not rulings on the underlying arguments. However, these stay fights can signal how courts are likely to rule on the merits in the future.

A few of the new administration’s battles already reached the Supreme Court on an emergency basis. The court declined to let the president oust the head of a federal whistleblower agency, although a Washington appeals court eventually allowed the firing. The justices also dealt a blow to Trump’s foreign-aid freeze, reinstating a lower-court order requiring disbursement of as much as $2 billion owed to contractors.

Here are other issues poised for Supreme Court intervention in the near future or already before the justices:

Fired workers

In the California case filed Monday, Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris asked the justices to pause a judge’s injunction ordering workers back on the job at six agencies, alleging it violated separation of powers principles “on the flimsiest of grounds and the hastiest of timelines.”

The Justice Department not only wants the justices to pause the judge’s injunction, it also wants an immediate order allowing the government to keep the reinstated workers on paid administrative leave instead of restoring them to full-duty status in the meantime. The Supreme Court hasn’t set a schedule yet.

Meanwhile, the government is fighting a Maryland judge’s order reinstating an even larger pool of fired probationary employees across 18 agencies; probationary workers have been in their current roles for one or two years, depending on the position. The 4th Circuit recently refused to halt a 14-day temporary restraining order since the district court is expected to rule soon on a longer-term injunction. The Justice Department hasn’t said if it will take that case to the Supreme Court in the interim.

Birthright citizenship

The other fight before the justices at the moment involves the Trump administration’s request to partially enforce his executive order restricting automatic birthright citizenship, after several courts temporarily halted the policy nationwide while the case goes forward. Trump is vying to topple what has been the widespread understanding that the Constitution’s 14th Amendment confers citizenship on virtually everyone born on U.S. soil. The final court briefs on that issue are due next month.

Teacher training

Another dispute ripe to reach the high court is over the administration’s attempt to terminate more than 100 teacher training and recruitment grants because the programs violated Trump’s policies against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, among other reasons. A Boston federal judge ordered the move stopped for 14 days, and last week a 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel denied the Justice Department’s request to pause the stay.

The Justice Department had said it was prepared to ask the Supreme Court to intervene if there was any delay in the appeal, but it hasn’t yet filed since the 1st Circuit entered its order. Earlier this month, the administration succeeded in persuading a 4th Circuit panel to pause a lower court injunction halting funding cuts under Trump’s anti-DEI policy. But two of those judges suggested there could be more targeted constitutional challenges to how U.S. agencies carry out Trump’s directive.

Funding freeze

The administration’s push to dramatically scale back federal spending has sparked numerous lawsuits. The government has a stay request pending before the 1st Circuit related to a since-rescinded Office of Management and Budget memo that froze trillions of dollars in federal grants, loans and assistance. A Rhode Island federal judge imposed a long-term injunction, citing the “catastrophic consequences.”

Resettling refugees

The Justice Department wants the 9th Circuit to halt a Seattle judge’s order forcing the administration to resume allowing in refugees and paying organizations that help those new arrivals find homes, jobs and other services. In a role reversal, the administration separately is fighting a request by the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops in the DC Circuit to revive funding for refugee resettlement after a Washington judge denied the bishops’ request for an injunction.

DOGE activity

The Justice Department has asked the DC Circuit to immediately halt a judge’s order that would let Democratic state officials demand documents and information about the power Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has been exercising across the U.S. government. The ruling marked the first time the US DOGE Service–the official entity Trump created within the White House–and Musk directly were ordered to produce records.

The Justice Department called the order a “grievous” violation of the U.S. Constitution’s separation of powers principles. Briefing on that request is set to finish by Tuesday.

In the 4th Circuit, the government wants to pause a Maryland judge’s order limiting DOGE’s decision-making at the U.S. Agency for International Development. The district judge concluded Musk and DOGE-affiliated staff were acting beyond what the Constitution allowed and said the administration couldn’t get around his order by giving DOGE employees new positions within the agency.

Agency firings

The Justice Department already has signaled plans to ask the Supreme Court to reverse decades-old precedent that limits the president’s power to remove independent agency heads. A pair of cases argued before the DC Circuit on March 18 offer a vehicle for that. A three-judge panel is weighing the government’s request to pause lower-court rulings reinstating officials that Trump fired from the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board. It’s unclear when the court will rule.

In the meantime, more legal challenges could come soon in response to Trump’s removal of the two Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission – the same agency that was the subject of the 1935 Supreme Court precedent at issue, known as Humphrey’s Executor.