President Donald Trump during a meeting with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., in the Oval Office of the White House, Tuesday, July 22, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).
In Washington, D.C., a federal judge has stopped the Trump administration’s plan to close the Job Corps training program, which is the largest residential career training service for many underprivileged youth in the country. This marks the second time this month that such an effort has been blocked.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich, who was appointed by President Donald Trump during his first term, issued a preliminary injunction to prevent the shutdown of 99 Job Corps centers nationwide. The judge determined that the Department of Labor’s independent decision to close the program, which was established and approved by Congress, was in violation of federal law.
The case stems from the Labor Department notifying the 99 private Job Corps centers across the nation on May 29, 2025, that they would “cease operations” by June 30.
The lawsuit was filed last month by a group of seven student-enrollees in the Job Corps program hailing from Georgia, Mississippi, Oregon, North Dakota, and Michigan on behalf of themselves as well as the putative class of students enrolled at all 99 centers affected by the program’s shuttering.
The complaint alleged that the Labor Department was legally required to provide advance notice and an opportunity for public comment before closing any Job Corps center, as required by federal law. By failing to do so, the administration’s actions allegedly violated the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) and the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) of 2014.
The administration asserted that the shuttering of all Job Corps centers was a “statutorily authorized pause — as opposed to a closure,” a claim that Friedrich said did not stand up to scrutiny.
“This argument fails because DOL’s across-the-board shutdown extended far beyond any ‘pause’ contemplated by the statute,” the judge wrote. “The agency suspended operations at all 99 privately operated Job Corps centers without any expectation of future reopenings. And it effected the mass shutdown without complying with any of the statutory requirements that must precede a ‘pause’ in operations. DOL failed to conduct an individualized assessment or develop a performance improvement plan for any of the 99 centers. It instead suspended all operations based on the perceived failures of the Job Corps program as a whole.”
Friedrich said the nationwide shutdown was “not only unprecedented,” but also” inconsistent with its historic standard of practice.” While earlier “pauses” allowed for the realistic possibility that Job Corps centers would be reopened, here, the administration informed students that they should harbor “no expectation of transfer to another center or return to their current center.”
The court said there was no need to engage in any analysis regarding the difference between a “pause” and a “closure” because “the record unequivocally demonstrates that DOL unlawfully ‘closed’ all 99 privately operated Job Corps centers, in violation of the WIOA.”
“At bottom, DOL’s position is entirely circular: So long as the agency uses the term ‘pause’ and never makes a final decision to ‘formally close’ a center, it is authorized to shutter any Job Corps center indefinitely,” Friedrich wrote. “In DOL’s view, the WIOA’s procedural mandates hinge on the terminology the agency chooses to use, allowing it to sidestep its statutory obligations entirely. That cannot be correct. Because DOL unlawfully ‘closed’ all 99 privately operated Job Corps centers, in violation of the WIOA, the Court finds that the plaintiffs have established a likelihood of success on the merits of their APA claims.”
The plaintiffs are being represented in the case by the Southern Poverty Law Center and Public Citizen. Adam Pulver, an attorney with Public Citizen Litigation Group and lead counsel for the plaintiffs, lauded the ruling.
“The Department of Labor’s decision to abruptly close Job Corps centers across the country, ignoring legal requirements and literally putting vulnerable young people on the street, was callous, and as the Judge today agreed, illegal,” Pulver said in a statement. “The Department’s ludicrous argument to the court, that in shutting down 99 Job Corps centers it was not actually closing those centers, was a naked attempt to evade clear law.”
