‘A shell of itself’: Federal judge pauses efforts to wind down Education Department

The U.S. Department of Education is temporarily barred from carrying out an executive order to shut down the agency and must reinstate employees who were fired as part of a mass reduction in force in March, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

In the preliminary injunction in State of New York v. McMahon, U.S. District Judge Myong Joun ordered that the department be “restored to the status quo” prior to the day President Donald Trump retook office.

The agency’s actions since show no evidence that its workforce reductions have improved efficiency or that the agency is making progress in working with Congress to close the department, Joun said. 

“The supporting declarations of former Department employees, educational institutions, unions, and educators paint a stark picture of the irreparable harm that will result from financial uncertainty and delay, impeded access to vital knowledge on which students and educators rely, and loss of essential services for America’s most vulnerable student populations,” his ruling stated.

Joun also said the Education Department is prohibited from carrying out President Donald Trump’s March 21 directive to transfer management of the federal student loans portfolio and special education management and oversight out of the Education Department.

“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 preliminary injunction requires the agency to submit a report to the court within 72 hours of the order, outlining all the steps it is taking to comply, and to do so “every week thereafter until the Department is restored to the status quo prior to January 20, 2025.”

Thursday’s ruling is a setback to the Trump administration’s goals of reducing the size and scope of the federal government. The ambitions are to give more flexibility and decision-making power to the states, supporters of the administration action said.

Madi Biedermann, deputy assistant secretary for communications at the Education Department, said the agency will challenge the ruling “on an emergency basis.”

“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,” Biedermann said in an emailed statement Thursday. 

Biedermann added, “This ruling is not in the best interest of American students or families.”

Higher education advocates, on the other hand, celebrated the ruling.

“Today, the court rightly rejected one of the administration’s very first illegal, and consequential, acts: abolishing the federal role in education,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, in a Thursday statement. Most Americans and states “want to keep the education department because it ensures all kids, not just some, can get a shot at a better life,” she said.

The legal challenge began March 13, when the attorneys general in 20 states and the District of Columbia sued the Education Department to halt the mass workforce reductions announced March 11. 

About half of the agency’s 4,133 employees were let go or accepted buy outs. Almost a third of the affected employees had worked in one of three offices within the Education Department: Federal Student Aid, the Office for Civil Rights and the Institute for Education Sciences. 

Later that month, Trump signed an executive order at a White House ceremony that directed U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon to begin closing down the agency to the “maximum extent appropriate.”

“My administration will take all lawful steps to shut down the department,” Trump said at the March 20 signing ceremony. “We’re going to shut it down, and shut it down as quickly as possible.”

McMahon, during several appearances on Capitol Hill, has acknowledged that only Congress has the authority to close the agency and said she is working with lawmakers to do so.