Sotomayor Calls Supreme Court 'Either Willfully Blind' Or 'Naive' On Education Department

"[E]ither way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave," she wrote in a blistering dissent.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor took the high court’s conservative members to task Monday as they made the “indefensible” decision to allow President Donald Trump to go ahead with his plan to dismantle the Department of Education.

The department was created by an act of Congress around 50 years ago and it would take an act of Congress to formally shutter it, but Trump is attempting to take it apart by executive order and mass firings instead.

Sotomayor pointed to how Trump and his allies have repeatedly made plain his intention to scrap the department. The president asserted on the campaign trail and since retaking the White House that he would act alone to close it.

“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,” Sotomayor wrote.

The Supreme Court’s decision lifts an injunction that paused Trump’s plan while the matter was litigated in the court system, maintaining the status quo until a more final decision could be made. Now, the administration can go ahead with some 1,400 firings, likely leaving the department a shell of itself while the matter still works its way through the courts.