The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on June 6 to allow it to resume dismantling the U.S. Department of Education, following a lower court’s previous order halting the process.
A federal district court issued an injunction last month blocking the process, directing the government to rehire some of the departmental employees who had been laid off.
“Each day this preliminary injunction remains in effect subjects the Executive Branch to judicial micromanagement of its day-to-day operations,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in the new emergency application.
The laying off of 1,378 department employees “effectuates the Administration’s policy of streamlining the Department and eliminating discretionary functions that, in the Administration’s view, are better left to the States.”
At the same time, the federal government acknowledges that only Congress can abolish the department and that the government needs to “retain sufficient staff to continue fulfilling statutorily mandated functions and [that it] has kept the personnel that … are necessary for those tasks,” Sauer wrote.
President Donald Trump campaigned on shuttering the department.
On March 20, he signed Executive Order 14242, pledging to close the agency, which he said “has entrenched the education bureaucracy and sought to convince America that Federal control over education is beneficial.”
The department “does not educate anyone” and “maintains a public relations office that includes over 80 staffers at a cost of more than $10 million per year,” the executive order states.
In a May 22 order, U.S. District Judge Myong Joun of Massachusetts ordered the government to rehire the laid-off employees and reverse other actions aimed at downsizing the department.
Joun said that for more than 150 years, “the federal government has played a crucial role in education.” Since it was created in 1979, the department’s “role in education across the nation cannot be understated,” he added.
The agency oversees the federal student loan system, performs research for states and schools, distributes federal funds, and enforces compliance with various federal laws.
Joun said it’s clear that the Trump administration’s “true intention is to effectively dismantle the Department” without first obtaining the required congressional approval.
On June 4, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit declined to stay Joun’s order.
The panel said the federal government offered no evidence to contradict Joun’s determination that the firings would have a “disabling impact” on the department. The motion to put the lower court order on hold “does not warrant our interfering with the ordinary course of appellate adjudication.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson directed the lead respondent in the case, the state of New York, to file a reply to the application by 4 p.m. on June 13.
This article by Matthew Vadum appeared June 6, 2025, in The Epoch Times.