The Trump administration has taken its battle over the U.S. Department of Education to the Supreme Court, seeking to lift a federal court’s order that mandates the reinstatement of employees laid off as part of a controversial executive order signed by Donald Trump. This executive order went into effect on March 20th. It sought to eliminate the federal transportation agency and has had deep legal troubles ever since.
Our friends at the American Federation of Teachers protested these layoffs by suing the president. Not only did they sue to defend the Department of Education, the union’s legal action came after more than 1,300 employees were terminated following Trump’s announcement on March 11, which outlined plans for a significant reduction in the agency’s workforce. The layoffs have raised concerns about the impact on civil rights enforcement within the department, which oversees approximately 17 million families’ college aid applications annually.
These inevitable cuts caused the closure of seven field offices. Out of the department’s twelve regional offices, these two were focused specifically on enforcing civil rights protections for students. In response to these developments, U.S. District Judge Myong Joun in Boston issued a ruling requiring the Department of Education to rehire the affected workers. A federal appeals court in San Francisco denied the move to overturn the ruling. So, regrettably, the administration is once again reduced to appealing to the highest court in the land.
There’s a much bigger picture in play beyond this courtroom clash. IN A COALITION of 21 states and the District of Columbia, Michigan, Nevada, and New York have banded together to sue the Trump administration. Their challenge is thus premised on the highly regressive and discriminatory impact of these staff cuts on educational equity and on the enforcement of civil rights.
D. John Sauer, a representative for the administration, stated that the layoffs “effectuate the Administration’s policy of streamlining the Department and eliminating discretionary functions that, in the Administration’s view, are better left to the States.” This view dovetails beautifully with one of Trump’s long-time pet peeves about federal education overreach that he’d like to see eliminated.
The U.S. Department of Education was created, in its current form, by President Jimmy Carter in 1979. The truth is, throughout its history, it has been under huge existential threats. In the administration of former President Ronald Reagan, conservatives did just that and called for its dissolution in the early 1980s. During his first term, Trump tried to completely fold it into the Labor Department.