(TNND) — A court-ordered block on the Trump administration’s government downsizing efforts was removed while a legal challenge plays out.

The Supreme Court issued an order Tuesday that lifted a district court injunction that halted the administration’s plans to restructure and reduce the size of the federal workforce.

President Donald Trump issued an order in February for federal agencies to go after “waste, bloat, and insularity” in the bureaucracy.

Trump directed agency heads to plan for “large-scale reductions in force” consistent with applicable law.

The president ordered a hiring freeze and offered voluntary deferred resignations, with Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency cost-cutting task force leading the way.

Musk is out, but DOGE continues its work.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the lone dissenter in the Supreme Court opinion, which didn’t address any specific downsizing plan.

Jackson said it was better to keep the status quo, pausing layoffs, before the lawsuit from the American Federation of Government Employees is settled.

She argued that mass layoffs of government workers could cause irreparable harm.

But, she decried, "... this Court sees fit to step in now and release the President’s wrecking ball at the outset of this litigation.”

The majority said the administration was likely to prevail in its argument that Trump’s executive order was lawful, so they decided to lift the injunction.

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"Today’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling is another definitive victory for the President and his administration,” White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Harrison Fields said in a statement emailed to The National News Desk. “It clearly rebukes the continued assaults on the President’s constitutionally authorized executive powers by leftist judges who are trying to prevent the President from achieving government efficiency across the federal government.”

A U.S. Office of Personnel Management spokeswoman said her office is pleased that the Supreme Court recognized that Trump’s order and the following guidance “were entirely lawful. OPM will partner with agencies to deliver an efficient and effective federal workforce that will provide improved services for the American people at a drastically lower cost."

The OPM at the beginning of the month provided its first official snapshot of employment trends under the Trump administration.

As of March 31, there were nearly 2.3 million federal civilian employees, with more than 23,000 positions gone since the end of the last fiscal year.

Data from the Federal Reserve shows a reduction of 57,000 federal employees since the start of the year.

The OPM said its early data reflects Trump’s hiring freeze.

The OPM said hundreds of thousands more workers will drop off the rolls in October, when federal employees leave as part of the deferred resignation program.

And the OPM said tens of thousands of employees received reduction-in-force or termination notices but were still on payrolls, because they were covered by court orders.

Some of those employees could potentially lose their jobs now that the injunction was lifted.

The American Federation of Government Employees and other challengers expressed their disappointment in the Supreme Court’s opinion.

“Today’s decision has dealt a serious blow to our democracy and puts services that the American people rely on in grave jeopardy,” the coalition of challengers said in a statement. “This decision does not change the simple and clear fact that reorganizing government functions and laying off federal workers en masse haphazardly without any congressional approval is not allowed by our Constitution."

Department-by-department plans for layoffs seem to remain in flux.

But CNN compiled a tracker of cuts.

The U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID, would see its full workforce fired. That’s about 10,000 people.

About 2,700 people have been laid off or targeted for layoffs at the Small Business Administration.

The Department of Education would lose 1,300 people.

About 1,500 would be fired at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The U.S. Agency for Global Media would lose about 1,400.

The Food and Drug Administration would reduce its staff by about 4,200.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would cut about 1,600 jobs.

The Social Security Administration would cut about 7,000.

The Forest Service would let go of about 3,500 employees.

And the Internal Revenue Service would fire about 7,300 staffers.

More federal workers at additional agencies are at risk of losing their jobs under the administration’s restructuring efforts.

The State Department said after the Supreme Court’s opinion was released that it would move forward with its reorganization plan.

But Veterans Affairs announced this week that it’s tabling its plans to lay off about 80,000 employees.

VA, with the largest payroll of the 18 cabinet-level departments, seemed like a logical place to make cuts.

However, VA Secretary Doug Collins vowed that the workforce cuts wouldn’t jeopardize health care or benefits for veterans.

VA now says it expects to shed 30,000 employees by the end of the fiscal year via normal attrition, early retirements, deferred resignations and the federal hiring freeze. And that’s apparently good enough for VA’s workforce goals.

Chris Edwards, a federal budget expert at Cato Institute and an advocate for smaller government, applauded the Supreme Court opinion that allows the Trump administration to proceed with downsizing plans.

“His executive order wants to reduce excess positions in the federal government that are not consistent with the law,” Edwards said. “So, that's a different thing than scrapping whole agencies and the like, which you would need Congress, Congress' approval for. So, I think the Supreme Court made the right decision.”

Edwards said Trump hasn't reduced the federal workforce very much yet, “Despite lots of scary headlines.”

He pointed to the Fed data showing a reduction of about 57,000 workers for the first six months of this year.

And Edwards noted how Trump still has a way to go to trim the federal workforce to the level it was at when he left office the first time.

The federal government added about 130,000 workers during President Joe Biden’s term. And the government has added 523,000 workers over the past 25 years.

“Federal jobs shouldn't be cast in stone,” Edwards said.

He said Trump and his cabinet secretaries should have the flexibility to restructure federal manpower.

DOGE says it has saved taxpayers $190 billion so far by canceling costly government contracts, selling assets, fighting fraud, stopping grants, making changes to programs, layoffs and more. Some experts believe DOGE's cost-saving claims are exaggerated.

With Musk no longer leading DOGE, it’s unclear if the administration will push as hard to lay off workers.

“My sense is now that the administration was a little too rash initially with some of its layoffs, and it had to reverse course and rehire some people,” Edwards said. “And I think they've learned a lesson actually from that. I think they're talking about sort of DOGE 2.0 now, where they're being a little more deliberative about their restructuring. And I think they will be.”

Edwards expressed optimism about the reforms. But he also said layoffs alone won’t do much to address the federal deficits.

Federal worker compensation is about $400 billion, compared to federal spending of around $7 trillion.