Trump accused of continuing to shutter Education Department against court orders

(CN) — The Trump administration may not be complying with court orders to halt its planned shuttering of the Department of Education, a group of states, teachers’ unions and school groups argued Thursday in a new court filing.

The 21 states and other educational entities sued the administration back in March after its Secretary of Education Linda McMahon announced massive workforce reductions to the department that would have halved its staff.

But despite court orders to reverse the terminations, the states claim that the administration is slow-rolling its efforts to bring the department back to the status quo.

They point to a status report from a department official, which the states say “makes clear that the department has not yet taken substantial steps to comply with the court’s order.”

The report in question, filed June 3 by Department of Education chief of staff Rachel Oglesby, says that a committee of senior department leaders met to discuss “activities that needed to be paused.”

What the report doesn’t do, the states claim, is offer a specific timeline or steps to actually ensure that the department complies with court orders.

“In particular, defendants’ status report does not indicate that any employees subject to the mass termination order have been returned to active-duty status to perform their work,” the states say. “Nor do defendants identify any efforts, timelines, or plans to return department employees to work or any communications to department staff regarding the same.”

McMahon told Fox News in March that the reduction in force was the first step in President Donald Trump’s broader directive to “shut down the Department of Education.”

Last month, a federal judge slammed McMahon for acting “contrary to law” in carrying out that plan.

“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,” U.S. District Judge Myong Joun, a Joe Biden appointee, wrote in a ruling from May 22.

The judge also found that cuts to the department’s Office for Civil Rights would negatively impact potential student victims of sex crimes.

“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 granted the states’ request for an emergency status conference to determine “whether and to what extent” the department is following that ruling. He set the conference for Monday.

The Trump administration has already unsuccessfully appealed Joun’s ruling to the First Circuit, losing a bid earlier this week to lift the order to allow for the department’s shutdown.

According to the panel of circuit judges, the administration “failed to show that the plaintiffs would not be substantially injured by a stay of this preliminary injunction during the pendency of this appeal. Nor have they shown that the public’s interest lies in permitting a major federal department to be unlawfully disabled from performing its statutorily assigned functions.”

U.S. Circuit Judges David Barron, a Barack Obama appointee, Julie Rikelman, a Joe Biden appointee and William Kayatta, another Obama appointee, issued that decision on Wednesday.

The circuit court’s ruling was celebrated by a coalition of plaintiffs — including the Somerville Public School Committee, Easthampton School District, American Federation of Teachers (AFT) - Massachusetts, AFT, AFSCME Council 93, American Association of University Professors, and Service Employees International Union — who are suing alongside the states.

“We are deeply encouraged by the First Circuit’s decision to maintain the block that is preventing the Trump-Vance administration from proceeding with its harmful efforts to dismantle the Department of Education while our case moves forward,” the coalition said in a statement to Courthouse News. “We will never stop fighting on behalf of all students and public schools and the protections, services, and resources they need to thrive.”

Joun’s ruling, now backed by the circuit court, protects the Education Department 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 in the future.

According to the plaintiffs, 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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