Supreme Court Lets Trump Continue Education Department Purge

The Supreme Court ruled to let Trump continue his dismantling of the Department of Education, lifting a lower court ruling that ordered the administration to reinstate agency workers. Bloomberg's Greg Stohr reports.

A divided US Supreme Court let President Donald Trump resume dismantling the Department of Education, lifting a lower court order that required the reinstatement of as many as 1,400 workers.

Granting an emergency request from the administration, the justices put on hold a federal district court ruling that said the Trump purge would leave the department unable to perform duties required under US law. The Supreme Court order will apply while the case continues on appeal.

The court’s majority gave no explanation, as is often the case with emergency requests.

The three liberals on the court dissented. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the group that the high court order “will unleash untold harm, delaying or denying educational opportunities and leaving students to suffer from discrimination, sexual assault, and other civil rights violations without the federal resources Congress intended.”

Last week, the Supreme Court allowed Trump to move ahead with widespread plans to dramatically reduce the size of the federal workforce. However, in its July 8 order, the conservative majority said it wasn’t ruling on the lawfulness of any individual agency plan. Monday’s order is likely to give a boost to the administration in defending against legal challenges to agency-specific actions.

The case is the latest to 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.”

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.

The New York attorney general’s office, which led the coalition of states that brought one of the underlying lawsuits, and a spokesperson for the White House did not immediately return requests for comment.

US District Judge Myong Joun in Boston ruled in May that the personnel cuts would “likely cripple the department.” He said the challengers would probably succeed in showing that Trump was effectively dissolving 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 refused to block Joun’s ruling, paving the way for Trump’s Supreme Court request.

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