A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Thursday to reinstate more than 1,300 U.S. Department of Education employees, saying they were terminated en masse in an effort to shut down the agency without the approval of Congress.
U.S. District Judge Myong Joun in Boston at the behest of a group of Democratic-led states, school districts and teachers’ unions issued an injunction, opens new tab blocking the administration from moving forward with a mass layoff announced in March that would cut the Education Department’s staff by half.
“The record abundantly reveals that defendants’ true intention is to effectively dismantle the department without an authorizing statute,” wrote Joun, an appointee of President Donald Trump’s Democratic predecessor Joe Biden.
Lawyers with the Justice Department argued that the mass terminations were not an effort to shutter the agency but a lawful effort to eliminate bureaucratic bloat while fulfilling its overall statutory mission more efficiently.
But Joun said the cuts were having the opposite effect, as the “massive reduction in staff has made it effectively impossible for the department to carry out its statutorily mandated functions.”
Education Department spokesperson Madi Biedermann said in a statement that the Trump administration would immediately challenge the ruling, which she said came from “an unelected judge with a political axe to grind.”
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon announced the mass layoff, known in government parlance as a “reduction in force,” on March 11, which her agency said was being carried out as part of the Education Department’s “final mission.”
Those job cuts were announced a week before Trump signed an executive order calling for the department’s closure, following a campaign promise to conservatives aimed at leaving school policy almost entirely in the hands of states and local boards.
The department, which Congress created in 1979, oversees $1.6 trillion in college loans, enforces civil rights laws in schools and provides federal funding for needy districts.
In combination with 600 employees who took buy-out offers, the Education Department said the job cuts once implemented would leave it with 2,183 workers, down from 4,133 when Trump took office on January 20.
Democratic attorneys general from 20 states and the District of Columbia as well as school districts and teachers’ unions then sued.
They said the cuts rendered the department unable to meet its duties to administer funding for public schools, student loans for college students and to enforce civil rights law.
REUTERS
