Supreme Court gives Trump win, blocking teacher funds stuck in anti-DEI roundup

WASHINGTON (CN) — President Donald Trump can disregard a court order restoring millions of dollars in grant funding for teachers, the Supreme Court ruled Friday, ceding to the president’s claims that a federal judge exceeded judicial authority.

In an apparent 5-4 vote, the justices said it was unlikely the government could recover grant funds once they were disbursed. According to a per curiam opinion from the majority, the schools had the financial wherewithal to keep programs running for now, and if they prevail, could recover any wrongfully withheld funds.

“If respondents instead decline to keep the programs operating, then any ensuing irreparable harm would be of their own making,” the court wrote. Chief Justice John Roberts, a George W. Bush appointee, would have denied the application. Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

In a sharp rebuke, Jackson, a Joe Biden appointee, said it was beyond puzzling that the majority treated Trump’s application as an emergency. Jackson said her colleagues’ eagerness to insert themselves into the early stage of ongoing litigation is unprincipled and unfortunate.

In her dissent joined by Sotomayor, a Barack Obama appointee, Jackson said her conservative colleagues’ decision was striking because it would encourage the government’s strategic decision to sidestep the litigation process.

“If the emergency docket has now become a vehicle for certain defendants to obtain this court’s real-time opinion about lower court rulings on various auxiliary matters, we should announce that new policy and be prepared to shift how we think about, and address, these kinds of applications,” Jackson wrote.

Kagan, a Barack Obama appointee, said her colleagues’ ruling is at odds with the briefing before the court. The states repeatedly noted that losing the grants has already and will continue to force them to curtail teacher training programs.

“It is a mistake for the court to grant this emergency application,” Kagan wrote.

Trump framed his emergency appeal as a referendum on the “unconstitutional reign” of federal courts that have paused his administration’s policies in the last few weeks. The president made similarjudicial overreach claims when appealing a pause in his order ending birthright citizenship and an order reinstating thousands of federal workers.

A federal judge ordered Trump to restore millions of dollars in funding for teacher training grants earlier this month. Trump abruptly cut funds for the Teacher Quality Partnership and Supporting Effective Educator Development. Both grants were established by Congress to recruit and train educators to work in high-need rural and urban school districts.

The numerous programs that money went toward included initiatives that taught teachers second languages, recruited them to high-poverty schools and trained them on special education requirements.

The grants got swept up in Trump’s executive order to root out diversity, equity and inclusion across the public and private sectors. According to the administration, the money trained teachers on “divisive ideologies” like anti-racism, which run afoul of the administration’s platform.

California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, New York and Wisconsin sued the administration, claiming the cuts exceeded $250 million in their states alone.

Thousands of teachers’ salaries were funded through grants, according to the states. Without the funding, the states predicted a worsening teacher shortage nationwide that would destabilize local school systems.

California said Trump wanted to prevail at the Supreme Court for the sake of the win, not out of concern about the grant money.

“It appears that defendants’ real concern is not with this case or the courts below; it is with other cases in other ‘forums across the country’ where courts are grappling with a raft of legal disputes arising out of recent actions by the Executive Branch,” the states told the justices.

The Justice Department warned the high courtthat paying for the grant programs would be inconsistent with the interests of the executive branch and cost taxpayer money that could never be recovered.

Lower court judges were usurping congressional authority, Trump said, by reimagining contract and grant-termination claims — which are reviewed by the Court of Federal Claims — into Administrative Procedure Act lawsuits.

“The aim is clear: to stop the executive branch in its tracks and prevent the administration from changing direction on hundreds of billions of dollars of government largesse that the executive branch considers contrary to the United States’ interests and fiscal health,” the government wrote.

The states countered that it would be the Supreme Court expropriating authority if the justices intervened. The lower court is currently considering whether to extend its temporary restraining order into an injunction. Temporary restraining orders typically can’t be appealed because of their limited lifespan.

According to the majority, the government is likely to prevail on appeal because the underlying ruling was “strongly challenged” and the court likely lacked jurisdiction.

While temporary restraining orders aren’t typically reviewable, the majority said the ruling below was similar to a preliminary injunction. Treating the application as a stay pending appeal, the court agreed to pause grant payments until the case comes back up to the justices on the merits.

The temporary restraining order would have expired on April 7. Jackson said the majority was “playing remedy police” and chastised the intervention when the order was only instated a week ago. She said the ruling allowed the Department of Education to implement a new summary grant termination policy, upending the status quo that causes zero concrete harm to the government.

“It boggles the mind to equate the devastation wrought from such abrupt funding withdrawals with the mere risk that some grantees might seek to draw down previously promised funds that the department wants to yank away from them,” Jackson wrote.

Jackson strongly disputed her colleagues’ assertion that the government would likely prevail in the litigation. She said the high court’s attention had been diverted from the government’s weak arguments to Trump’s attack on lower court authority.

“Children, pets, and magicians might find pleasure in the clever use of such shiny-object tactics,” Jackson wrote. “But a court of law should not be so easily distracted.”

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