Washington — The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to pause a lower court order that required the Department of Education to reinstate nearly 1,400 employees who had been laid off while proceedings over the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the agency continue.
The high court granted a request from the Trump administration to lift for now the injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Myong Joun, which blocked the mass layoffs at the Education Department. A federal appeals court rejected a bid to pause that decision while the Justice Department appealed, after which it sought emergency relief from the Supreme Court.
The decision to lift the stay was 6 to 3, with the majority saying the lower court’s injunction would be paused while the case works its way through the appeals process.
The court’s three liberals disagreed with the move, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor writing a dissent that was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
“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. “Two lower courts rose to the occasion, preliminarily enjoining the mass firings while the litigation remains ongoing. Rather than maintain the status quo, however, this Court now intervenes, lifting the injunction and permitting the Government to proceed with dismantling the Department. That decision is indefensible.”
Dismantling the Education Department
President Trump has overseen a sweeping effort to slash the size of the federal government since returning to the White House earlier this year. His administration has sought to conduct mass layoffs across the executive branch, and in March, the president signed an executive order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to facilitate her agency’s closure “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.”
As part of the plan to dismantle the Department of Education, the Trump administration canceled a slew of grants and implemented a reduction-in-force that impacted 1,378 employees — roughly one-third of the agency’s workforce. Those who were laid-off were placed on administrative leave in March, with their government service set to end June 9.
A group of 21 Democratic attorneys general, teachers unions and the Somerville and Easthampton school districts sued the Trump administration, arguing that the president and McMahon are unlawfully attempting to reorganize the Department of Education without authorization from Congress.
Joun found that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claims that the Trump administration’s actions were unlawful and said it is “effectively disabling the department from carrying out its statutory duties by firing half of its staff, transferring key programs out of the department, and eliminating entire offices and programs.”
The judge said that the reduction-in-force implemented by McMahon would “likely cripple the department,” and blocked the secretary from carrying out the layoffs or transferring certain functions from the Education Department.
In last month’s emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, Solicitor General D. John Sauer said the layoffs at the Department of Education are part of the administration’s “policy of streamlining the department and eliminating discretionary functions that, in the administration’s view, are better left to the states.”
He claimed that Joun’s order “thwarted the executive branch’s authority to manage the Department of Education despite lacking jurisdiction to second-guess the executive’s internal management decisions.”
But lawyers for the two Massachusetts-based school districts accused Education Department leaders of working to “destroy the agency by executive fiat.” They warned that if the Trump administration is allowed to move forward with its plans to dismantle the agency, the school districts may never be able to recover lost financial, informational and technical assistance.
“If the dismantling of the department is allowed to go forward now, and if respondents ultimately prevail at the end of this case, it will be effectively impossible to undo much of the damage caused,” lawyers for the school districts argued in a filing. “By contrast, if the government ultimately prevails in this case, it will be able to put its plans into operation merely slightly later than otherwise.”
Meanwhile, the Democratic attorneys general said that the Trump administration has never drawn any connection between the layoffs at the Department of Education and its goal of increasing efficiency.
“If the administration disagrees with existing statutory law, it may propose legislation through which Congress might change its past policy judgments. And the secretary may exercise the department’s lawful reorganization authority under” federal law, they wrote in a filing. “But the secretary cannot unilaterally redirect the nation’s approach to education by starving the department of the staff necessary to do its work.”
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