Trump Asks Supreme Court to Allow Education Department Purge (1)

President Donald Trump asked the US Supreme Court to let him resume dismantling the Department of Education, seeking to lift a lower court order that requires the reinstatement of as many as 1,400 workers.

The emergency request Friday challenges a federal district judge’s conclusion that Trump’s effort to shut down the department would leave it unable to perform duties required under US law, including managing federal student loans, aiding state education programs and enforcing civil rights law.

“The Constitution vests the executive branch, not district courts, with the authority to make judgments about how many employees are needed to carry out an agency’s statutory functions, and whom they should be,” US Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in the filing. Sauer is the administration’s top courtroom advocate.

The filing marks the 17th time since Trump’s inauguration that his administration has asked the Supreme Court for help as he seeks to implement a far-reaching agenda through executive orders and other unilateral steps. That number of requests far outpaces any of his predecessors.

It’s the first Supreme Court clash to squarely address Trump’s authority to dismantle entities created by Congress, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the US Agency for International Development and the US Institute of Peace.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced March 11 that the department was cutting half its staff through a reduction in force. Trump followed with a March 20 executive order that said McMahon should “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law, take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education.”

Read More: Trump Effort to Shutter Education Agency Blocked by Judge

The effort is being challenged in two lawsuits, one brought primarily by states led by Democrats and the other filed by several Massachusetts public school systems and unions.

US District Judge Myong Joun in Boston ruled in May that the personnel cuts would “likely cripple the department.” He said the challengers were likely to succeed in showing that Trump lacked power to effectively dissolve the department by getting rid of its employees, closing regional offices and moving programs to other federal agencies.

“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.”

The Boston-based 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday refused to block Joun’s ruling, paving the way for Trump’s Supreme Court filing.

The case is McMahon v. New York, 24a1203.

(Updates with excerpt from filing in third paragraph.)

To contact the reporters on this story:
Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net;
Zoe Tillman in Washington at ztillman2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Elizabeth Wasserman at ewasserman2@bloomberg.net

Steve Stroth

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