WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration requested the Supreme Court on Friday to halt a court order that mandates the rehiring of Education Department staff who were terminated in large-scale layoffs as part of his strategy to dismantle the agency.
The Justice Department’s urgent appeal to the Supreme Court argued that U.S. District Judge Myong Joun in Boston overstepped his jurisdiction last month by issuing a preliminary injunction that reversed the layoffs of approximately 1,400 employees and paused the overarching plan.
Joun’s decision has thwarted one of the significant campaign pledges of the Republican president and effectively delayed the initiative to reduce the department’s operations. A federal appeals court declined to suspend the order while the administration pursued its appeal.
The judge wrote that the layoffs “will likely cripple the department.”
But Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote on Friday that Joun was substituting his policy preferences for those of the Trump administration.
The layoffs help put in the place the “policy of streamlining the department and eliminating discretionary functions that, in the administration’s view, are better left to the states,” Sauer wrote.
He also pointed out that the Supreme Court in April voted 5-4 to block Joun’s earlier order seeking to keep in place Education Department teacher-training grants.
The current case involves two consolidated lawsuits that said Trump’s plan amounted to an illegal closure of the Education Department.
One suit was filed by the Somerville and Easthampton school districts in Massachusetts along with the American Federation of Teachers and other education groups. The other suit was filed by a coalition of 21 Democratic attorneys general.
The suits argued that layoffs left the department unable to carry out responsibilities required by Congress, including duties to support special education, distribute financial aid and enforce civil rights laws.
Education Department employees who were targeted by the layoffs have been on paid leave since March, according to a union that represents some of the agency’s staff. Joun’s order prevents the department from fully terminating them, but none have been allowed to return to work, according to the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252. Without Joun’s order, the workers were scheduled to be terminated Monday.
Trump has made it a priority to shut down the Education Department, though he has acknowledged that only Congress has the authority to do that. In the meantime, Trump issued a March order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to wind it down “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.”
Trump later said the department’s functions will be parceled to other agencies, suggesting that federal student loans should be managed by the Small Business Administration and programs involving students with disabilities would be absorbed by the Department of Health and Human Services. Those changes have not yet happened.
The president argues that the Education Department has been overtaken by liberals and has failed to spur improvements to the nation’s lagging academic scores. He has promised to “return education to the states.”
Opponents note that K-12 education is already mostly overseen by states and cities.
Democrats have blasted the Trump administration’s Education Department budget, which seeks a 15% budget cut including a $4.5 billion cut in K-12 funding as part of the agency’s downsizing.
Associated Press writer Collin Binkley contributed to this report.
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