Thin SCOTUS Emergency Docket Order Vexes Judge in DOE Cuts Case

A federal judge overseeing a challenge to civil rights cuts at the Department of Education said Wednesday he’s struggling to balance the thin rationale in a related Supreme Court emergency order with other precedent guiding the case.

Victim Rights Law Center sued the administration on behalf of two students over the March job cuts to the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights and won an injunction blocking the reductions. The plaintiffs claimed the reductions made it more difficult for students to have sexual, racial, and disability discrimination complaints investigated.

Judge Myong J. Joun of the District of Massachusetts told lawyers arguing the government’s motion to dismiss the case that he’s not sure how much weight to give to the US Supreme Court’s decision to pause an injunction in a related case challenging the Trump administration’s attempt to close the Education Department.

In that case, McMahon v. New York, justices granted the government’s request for a stay pending appeal without providing any legal reasoning.

Joun explained that until Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch scolded his colleague on the federal bench, Judge William G. Young, for not respecting the precedential value of the court’s emergency docket orders, he also didn’t think stay orders “have any controlling value other than in that case” if there’s no explanation for the order.

The Supreme Court’s active emergency docket has stewed conflict with lower courts amid their handling of litigation challenging a vast array of Trump administration actions and prompted some judges to speak out about a lack of guidance in the justices’ orders.

“There’s no explicit findings at all,” Joun said of the order in the New York case. “There’s no reasoning, no explanation, so that is where I’m having difficulty. It’s still very unclear to me given just a single sentence granting the stay in New York what effect that has outside of the New York case.”

He added: “I’m struggling with existing precedent, other Supreme Court cases, that are clearly binding on me, and if they stand opposite to that single sentence in New York, how do I reconcile that?”

The Department of Justice’s Brad Rosenberg said he appreciated the judge’s “conundrum” and encouraged him to read into the Supreme Court’s ruling in New York some evidence that the court’s albeit “thin” analysis found the government likely to prevail.

The high court’s order should cast “grave doubt on the viability of this case,” the government lawyer told the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts judge.

One solution, Rosenberg said, would be to wait until the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit rules on the government’s request for a stay of the injunction pending its appeal. That opinion believed to be forthcoming could offer some guidance on how to apply the high court’s order in New York, he said.

Sean R. Oullette of Public Justice, which represents the Victim Rights Law Center, argued that McMahon shouldn’t affect the injunction here, because Gorusch’s admonition to lower court justices said it is the reasoning of the emergency orders that are precedential.

“By the practical nature of what the court is doing,” he said, “it often doesn’t want to say much because courts will look to the court for guidance and the court doesn’t want to put a thumb on the scale.”

The plaintiffs are also represented by Glenn Agre Bergman & Fuentes LLP.

The case is Victim Rights Law Center v. United States Department of Education, D. Mass., 1:25-cv-11042, hearing held 9/24/25.