Trump Effort to Shutter Education Agency Blocked by Judge (2)

A US judge blocked President Donald Trump’s efforts for now to shutter the Department of Education, including a plan to slash the workforce in half and remove thousands of employees.

US District Judge Myong Joun in Boston wrote in a Thursday ruling that the personnel cuts would “likely cripple the department” and ordered the administration to reinstate employees to carry out duties required under US law, including managing federal student loans, aiding state education programs and enforcing compliance with civil rights laws.

Joun found that Trump lacked power to effectively dissolve a federal agency created by Congress by getting rid of its employees, closing regional offices and moving programs to other federal agencies. Trump has faced a slew of challenges to similar efforts to dismantle entities created by Congress, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, US Agency for International Development and the US Institute of Peace.

“A department without enough employees to perform statutorily mandated functions is not a department at all,” Joun wrote. “This court cannot be asked to cover its eyes while the department’s employees are continuously fired and units are transferred out until the department becomes a shell of itself.”

Read More: States Sue Trump Over Plan ‘Gutting’ Education Department

Hours later, the Trump administration asked the judge to put a hold on the injunction while the government appeals, saying it continued to believe the states would not prevail. The government alternatively asked the judge to grant a seven-day administrative stay by 10 a.m. Friday to halt the injunction while it seeks emergency relief from a federal appeals court.

“Once again, a far-left Judge has dramatically overstepped his authority, based on a complaint from biased plaintiffs, and issued an injunction against the obviously lawful efforts to make the Department of Education more efficient and functional for the American people,” Education Department spokesperson Madi Biedermann said in a statement.

Joun’s injunction blocks a “reduction in force” announced in early March to cut more than half of the department’s 4,000 employees, as well as a March 21 executive order from Trump directing US officials to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education” to the fullest extent allowed by law.

The states and organizations that sued over the Education Department cuts “paint a stark picture of the irreparable harm that will result from financial uncertainty and delay, impeded access to vital knowledge on which students and educators rely, and loss of essential services for America’s most vulnerable student populations,” Joun wrote. “The record abundantly reveals that defendants’ true intention is to effectively dismantle the department without an authorizing statute.”

The ruling covered two lawsuits, one brought primarily by states led by Democrats and the other filed by several Massachusetts public school systems and unions.

“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,” Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, which represents challengers in the school systems’ case, said in a statement.

Judges have grappled with how to determine when the administration’s mass cuts to federal workers and funding unlawfully override Congress’ authority. On Wednesday, a federal judge in Washington denied an injunction to parents who sued over layoffs and office closures within the Education Department’s civil rights enforcement arm, finding there was evidence that officials were still investigating complaints, just “at a much slower pace.”

The cases are Somerville Public Schools v. Trump, 25-cv-10677, and State of New York v. McMahon, 25-cv-10601. US District Court, District of Massachusetts (Boston).

(Updated with Trump administration motion to pause ruling in fifth paragraph,)

--With assistance from Erik Larson.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Zoe Tillman in Washington at ztillman2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Steve Stroth at sstroth@bloomberg.net

Anthony Aarons, Peter Blumberg

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