A Supreme Court Win | Power Line

On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated a temporary restraining order that had been entered by a district judge in Massachusetts, requiring the Department of Education to make payments that the Trump administration wants to cancel. (While DOGE is not mentioned, I take it that this is a DOGE or DOGE-like situation.) The case is Department of Education v. California et al. California and seven other liberal states sued in Massachusetts (why Massachusetts?) to “[enjoin] the Government from terminating various education-related grants.”

The District Court granted the TRO motion, and the First Circuit Court of Appeals denied the government’s motion for a stay of the restraining order in an opinion that is patently hostile to the Trump administration.

The Department of Education then petitioned the Supreme Court for a stay of the District Court’s order, which the Supreme Court granted on a 5-4 vote. Chief Justice John Roberts voted with the liberal minority, as he so often does. The Supreme Court’s order is based in part on the fact that, unlike the First Circuit, it thinks the Trump administration has a good chance of ultimately winning on the merits, always a key question when temporary relief is granted or denied.

Further, the Court treated the district court’s purported temporary restraining order as a temporary injunction. This is important because Democratic Party judges like to style their anti-Trump orders as TROs, because a temporary restraining order is not appealable. This Supreme Court order signals that it won’t let Democrats get away with that stratagem. (To be fair, the First Circuit also treated the district court’s order as a temporary injunction, so they weren’t fooled either.)

The other notable feature of the majority’s Per Curiam order is that it takes seriously the prospect of irreparable harm to the taxpayers. Along with likelihood of success on the merits, irreparable harm is the touchstone when temporary relief is granted or denied. The Supreme Court’s majority recognizes that wasteful or otherwise inappropriate spending by the federal government is probably gone forever, once the money goes out the door. Thus, the government faces irreparable harm if a court forces it make payments that turn out to be inappropriate.

The minority doesn’t take the taxpayers’ interests seriously, focusing instead on the alleged irreparable harm that check-cashing entities will suffer if their gravy train is shut down: they might even have to terminate programs, perish the thought.

While Friday’s decision won’t go down in history, it provides important insight into how the Supreme Court majority is likely to view future cases arising out of the Trump administration’s ongoing effort to stop wasteful, fraudulent and corrupt spending. The tea leaves, in short, are promising.