The Trump administration is still fervently seeking the Supreme Court’s help to implement the president’s agenda. The latest plea is a familiar one, casting the high court as the would-be judicial savior that can restore order in the face of wayward trial courts exceeding their authority across the country.
Wednesday’s application comes from the U.S. Department of Education, which the administration is formally representing while President Donald Trump seeks to dismantle it. Represented by Trump’s acting solicitor general, Sarah Harris, the government wants the justices to halt a Massachusetts judge’s order which, Harris wrote, “requires the government to immediately reinstate millions of dollars in federal grants that had been lawfully terminated.”
The appeal stems from the administration’s decision to terminate diversity, equity and inclusion (“DEI”)-related grants. “Yet the district court’s order is enabling many of those grantees to request payments on their grants, which grantees now have an incentive to do quickly,” Harris wrote in the application.
She highlighted an example of a grant that, she wrote, “funded a project that involved a ‘racial and ethnic autobiography’ that asked whether individuals ever ‘felt threatened? marginalized? privileged?’ and how they would ‘seek to challenge power imbalances.’” Another, she wrote, “sought to ensure that teachers were ‘purposeful in implementing cultural and SEL [social-emotional learning]/DEI practices with fidelity.’”
Harris said the case “exemplifies a flood of recent suits that raise the question: ‘Does a single district-court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever)’ millions in taxpayer dollars?”
The former Clarence Thomas clerk was quoting Justice Samuel Alito, who authored a dissent from the court’s March 5 refusal to help the government avoid paying nearly $2 billion in foreign aid funds for already completed work. The court split 5-4 in that case, and the administration wants to flip that dissent to a majority as it presses a series of urgent appeals in the early days of Trump’s second term.
Similarly, Harris brought an application to the court Monday seeking to halt a California judge’s order to reinstate thousands of federal employees. While asking for specific relief in that case as well, she also painted a broader picture, noting that “in the two months since Inauguration Day, district courts have issued more than 40 injunctions or TROs [temporary restraining orders] against the Executive Branch.” She called the situation “unsustainable” and wrote that “only this Court can end the interbranch power grab.” Likewise in Wednesday’s filing in the education case, she wrote: “Only this Court can right the ship — and the time to do so is now.” With the opposition’s response due Friday, we may soon learn if a majority of the court agrees. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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