On Thursday, a federal judge in Massachusetts, Myong J. Joun, issued a preliminary injunction preventing Secretary of Education Linda McMahon from executing President Trump’s executive order mandating the closure of the Department of Education.
The judge also enjoined the administration from reinstating the agency’s approximately 1,300 employees, who were told in March that they would lose their jobs as part of a sweeping staff reduction, and to “return the Department to the status quo.”
“A department without enough employees to perform statutorily mandated functions is not a department at all”, the judge explained, “This court cannot be asked to cover its eyes while the Department’s employees are continuously fired”.
While the administration had argued in court that the layoffs were intended to make the department more efficient, the judge wrote that he had seen “no evidence that the [reduction-in-force] has actually made the Department more efficient. Rather, the record is replete with evidence of the opposite.”
Joun also blocked Trump from keeping his promise to transfer management of the department’s entire portfolio of federal student loans and “special needs” programs to other federal agencies.
“Once again, a far-left Judge has dramatically overstepped his authority, based on a complaint from biased plaintiffs, and issued an injunction against the obviously lawful efforts to make the Department of Education more efficient and functional for the American people”, Madi Biedermann, the department’s deputy assistant secretary for communications, said instead.
When President Trump returned to the White House last January, the Department of Education had about 4,133 employees. The staff reduction, announced on March 11, caused more than 1,300 employees to leave. At the same time, an additional 600 officials chose to resign or retire.
In just a few months, therefore, the agency saw the number of its employees halved. The case has been brought to the attention of the judiciary by several plaintiffs, including 20 states, the District of Columbia and the American Federation of Teachers.
AFT President Randi Weingarten welcomed Judge Joun’s ruling: “This decision is a first step to reverse this war on knowledge and the undermining of broad-based opportunity. For America to build a brighter future, we must all take more responsibility, not less, for the success of our children.”
