Prof. Nick Bednar ’16 Quoted by New York Times About Supreme Court Allowing Government Layoffs to Proceed

Professor Nick Bednar ’16 was quoted by the New York Times about the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to allow the administration to proceed with mass layoffs at multiple federal agencies. The decision could result in job losses for tens of thousands of employees at agencies including the Departments of Housing and Urban Development, State and Treasury. The justices’ order is technically only temporary, guiding how the administration can proceed while the challenges to the layoffs’ legality continue. Prof. Bednar said that if courts ultimately find that the layoffs are illegal, federal workers would receive a minimum of back pay for the period when they had been illegally terminated. But while in these situations employees may be entitled to get their jobs back, the cases might drag on for so long that the government would be reorganized by the time a decision comes and there may not be jobs for the fired employees to go back to.