A federal judge in Massachusetts blocked the Trump administration from dismantling the Education Department, calling out the government’s “efficiency” efforts in the process as anything but. U.S. District Judge Myong Joun wrote that there’s “no evidence” that a massive reduction in force “has actually made the Department more efficient.”
“Rather,” he wrote Thursday, “the record is replete with evidence of the opposite.”
The Biden-appointed judge made that observation when he granted a preliminary injunction, ordering the government to, among other things, halt the reduction in force and reinstate federal employees who were already terminated.
In a lengthy opinion, Joun recalled the department’s intricate role in education nationwide:
[I]t administers the federal student loan portfolio, provides research and technological assistance to states and their educational institutions, disburses federal education funds, and monitors and enforces compliance with numerous federal laws. Congress enacted these laws to promote equality and anti-discrimination in schools, assist students with special needs and disabilities, ensure student privacy, and much more.
Noting that Congress created the department in 1979, the judge explained that the president can’t shut it down without congressional approval. And yet, he found the government is trying to effectively dismantle it without such approval.
The lawsuit, brought by a group of states, school districts, nonprofits and labor unions, “provided an in-depth look into how the massive reduction in staff has made it effectively impossible for the Department to carry out its statutorily mandated functions,” Joun wrote. He said he issued the injunction “to return the Department to the status quo such that it can comply with its statutory obligations.” It’s worth keeping in mind that this is a trial-level ruling that might not be the last word on the matter. In a separate appeal last month, the Supreme Court split 5-4 in siding with the administration to halt a ruling of Joun’s related to education grants. 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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