A federal judge in Massachusetts on Thursday issued an injunction blocking the Trump administration from dismantling the Department of Education and ordering that fired employees be reinstated.
“The record abundantly reveals that Defendants’ true intention is to effectively dismantle the Department without an authorizing statute,” U.S. District Judge Myong Joun wrote, noting “the Department cannot be shut down without Congress’s approval.”
The judge said an injunction was necessary because “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.”
Before the mass firings, or reduction in force, “the Department was already struggling to meet its goals, so it is only reasonable to expect that an RIF of this magnitude will likely cripple the Department,” Joun wrote.
A spokesperson for the Education Department, Madi Biedermann, said officials “will immediately challenge this on an emergency basis.”
Harrison Fields, a spokesperson for the White House, said in a statement that the “President and his Secretary of Education have the legal authority to make decisions regarding the agency’s reorganization, and a leftist judge’s ruling cannot change that reality. We look forward to appealing this misguided decision and achieving ultimate victory.”
The administration filed a notice of appeal Thursday afternoon.
The firings of 1,300 employees were announced in March after President Donald Trump pledged to shutter the department and days before he issued an executive order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education,” the judge noted.
In her confirmation hearing, McMahon testified that the administration would not try to abolish the department without congressional approval, as required by law, and said that she would present a plan that senators could get on board with.
“We’d like to do this right,” she said, adding that shutting down the department “certainly does require congressional action.”
The judge wrote that the administration also acknowledged in court filings that “the Department cannot be shut down without Congress’s approval, yet they simultaneously claim that their legislative goals (obtaining Congressional approval to shut down the Department) are distinct from their administrative goals (improving efficiency).”
“There is nothing in the record to support these contradictory positions,” the judge added.
“Not only is there no evidence that Defendants are pursuing a ‘legislative goal’ or otherwise working with Congress to reach a resolution, but there is also no evidence that the RIF has actually made the Department more efficient. Rather, the record is replete with evidence of the opposite,” he wrote.
While administration says the reduction in force “was implemented to improve ‘efficiency’ and ‘accountability,’” the judge wrote, the “record abundantly reveals that Defendants’ true intention is to effectively dismantle the Department without an authorizing statute.”
He ordered the administration not to implement Trump’s order, and said it must reinstate federal employees whose employment was terminated on or after Jan. 20. The judge said those moves were necessary “to restore the Department to the status quo such that it is able to carry out its statutory functions.”
It also blocks the department “from carrying out the President’s March 21, 2025 Directive to transfer management of federal student loans and special education functions out of the Department.”
Biedermann, the Education Department spokesperson, blasted the judge in a statement and said the ruling “is not in the best interest of American students or families.”
“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,” the statement said.
“President Trump and the Senate-confirmed Secretary of Education clearly have the authority to make decisions about agency reorganization efforts, not an unelected Judge with a political axe to grind,” Biedermann added.
Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the plaintiffs in the case, praised the ruling, which she said “rightly rejected one of the administration’s very first illegal, and consequential, acts: abolishing the federal role in education.”
“This decision is a first step to reverse this war on knowledge and the undermining of broad-based opportunity,” she said in a statement.