Judge slams Trump administration’s attempt to shutter Education Department

(CN) — A federal judge on Thursday lambasted the Trump administration’s efforts to shutter the Department of Education, finding that it likely acted “contrary to law” in ordering a massive reduction-in-force that would have halved the department’s workforce.

U.S. District Judge Myong Joun, a Joe Biden appointee, issued apreliminary injunction barring the reduction-in-force from taking effect. The judge also enjoined the administration from enforcing President Donald Trump’s March 20 executive order that mandated the department’s closure.

It’s a victory for 21 states whosued the administration in March after Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced that the workforce reductions were the first steps in the president’s goal of shutting down the department.

“His directive to me, clearly, is to shut down the Department of Education, which we know we’ll have to work with Congress to get that accomplished,” McMahon said in a March 11 interview with Fox News. “But what we did today was to take the first step of eliminating what I think is bureaucratic bloat.”

Joun agreed with the states’ assertions that McMahon likely lacked the authority to order the layoffs without congressional approval, despite her suggested intent to “work with Congress.”

“Defendants do acknowledge, as they must, that the department cannot be shut down without Congress’s approval, yet they simultaneously claim that their legislative goals (obtaining Congressional approval to shut down the Department) are distinct from their administrative goals (improving efficiency),” the judge wrote. “There is nothing in the record to support these contradictory positions.”

The Trump administration has already signaled its intent to appeal the ruling, in which the judge found that the administration had offered no evidence, nor cited any case law, to suggest that it had the power to wield such an influence over congressionally approved spending.

“These actions violate the separation of powers by violating the executive’s duties to take care to faithfully execute laws enacted by Congress, as well as its duties to expend funds that Congress has authorized it to appropriate,” Joun wrote.

Joun’s ruling echoed that of numerous other judges around the country who are faced with Trump’s unprecedented cuts to congressionally approved funding. Just last week, afederal judge in Rhode Island ruled that “agencies do not have unfettered power to further a president’s agenda” in response to the administration’s bid to pull $11 billion from public health initiatives.

“Today’s order means that the Trump administration’s disastrous mass firings of career civil servants are blocked while this wildly disruptive and unlawful agency action is litigated,” said Skye Perryman, President and CEO of Democracy Forward, which is representing school districts and teachers unions suing alongside the states.

“No one’s lives are being made better by this administration’s attempted dismantling of the Department of Education,” Perryman continued. “Instead of taking a wrecking ball to our nation’s best values and our chance at a better future, this administration should be focused on how to improve education and opportunities for all.”

This case is particularly notable since it deals with the potential shuttering of an entire department. The judge on Thursday criticized the administration’s apparent goal of doing so under the guise of “efficiency,” noting that it offered no evidence to suggest that the mass terminations resulted in the Education Department functioning any smoother.

In fact, Joun found that the opposite appeared to be the case, pointing to claims from the states that they were “experiencing delays and uncertainty in their receipt of federal educational funding, amounting in the millions, which jeopardize their missions of ensuring an educated citizenry and providing quality education.”

“Such delays and uncertainty raise immediate predicaments about whether there will be sufficient staff and student programming for the 2025-2026 school year and hinder long term planning,” Joun added. “Students will feel these effects in the form of lower quality of education, further demonstrating irreparable harm.”

In fact, it would have been the “most vulnerable student populations” affected the most, according to the judge. He said that cuts to specialized federal services would result in English language learners and special needs students being “particularly harmed.”

And cuts to the department’s Office for Civil Rights would negatively impact potential student victims of sex crimes, Joun found.

“Moreover, student complaints of discrimination, sexual harassment, and sexual assault may be ignored, and students with pending complaints are likely to be deprived of meaningful and timely resolutions of their cases due to the reduction in OCR staff,” he said.

Joun’s ruling protects the Education Department for now while the states’ lawsuit moves through the legal process. But the Trump administration could theoretically still win the case, reorder the terminations and shutter the department.

According to the states, the Department of Education’s programs serve nearly 18,200 school districts and over 50 million K-12 students across the country. Its higher education programs also support more than 12 million postsecondary students annually.

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