By Nate Raymond
BOSTON (Reuters) -A federal appeals court on Wednesday declined to lift a judge’s order blocking President Donald Trump’s administration from carrying out his executive order to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education and requiring it to reinstate employees who were terminated in a mass layoff.
The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Trump administration’s request to put on hold an injunction issued by a lower-court judge at the urging of several Democratic-led states, school districts and teachers’ unions.
The U.S. Department of Justice had asked for a swift ruling from the 1st Circuit so that it could promptly take the case up to the 6-3 conservative majority U.S. Supreme Court if the appeals court did not rule in its favor.
But Chief U.S. Circuit Judge David Barron, writing for a panel of three judges who were all appointed by Democratic presidents, said a stay was not warranted given the extensive findings a trial judge made about the impact mass firings at the department would have on its ability to function.
“What is at stake in this case, the district court found, was whether a nearly half-century-old cabinet department would be permitted to carry out its statutorily assigned functions or prevented from doing so by a mass termination of employees aimed at implementing the effective closure of that department,” he said.
The Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The lawsuits were filed after Secretary of Education Linda McMahon in March announced plans to carry out a mass termination of over 1,300 employees, which would cut the department’s staff by half as part of what it said was its “final mission.”
Those job cuts were announced a week before Trump signed an executive order calling for the department’s closure, following a campaign promise to conservatives aimed at leaving school policy almost entirely in the hands of states and local school boards.
Trump later announced plans to transfer the department’s student loan portfolio to the Small Business Administration and its special education, nutrition, and related services to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
In combination with 600 employees who took buyout offers, the Education Department said the job cuts once implemented would leave it with 2,183 workers, down from 4,133 when Trump took office on January 20.
Affected employees were placed on administrative leave on March 21 and were told they would continue receiving full pay and benefits until June 9. The administration argued the cuts were a lawful effort to streamline the agency and cut bloat.
But U.S. District Judge Myong Joun on May 22 concluded that the job cuts were in fact an effort by the administration to shut down the department without the necessary approval of Congress, which created the agency in 1979.
The Education Department subsequently notified those employees about the judge’s ruling in an effort to comply with it.
The administration also appealed, saying that while Trump has made no secret of his desire to abolish the department, his administration understood that only Congress could do so and that the case ultimately concerned a personnel action.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Bill Berkrot)
