Federal Judge to Trump: Reinstate fired Education Department employees

A federal judge has ordered the Department of Education to reinstate thousands of employees it fired in advancing President Donald Trump’s mission to eliminate the department.

Today, US District Judge Myong J. Joun granted a preliminary injunction on the department’s widespread reduction in force, or RIF. Initiated in early March, the firings dealt a massive blow to the agency’s workforce even before Trump signed an executive order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “facilitate the closure” to the “maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.” The department, which is responsible for disbursing federal funds to states and schools, enforcing civil rights laws, and overseeing federal student loans, was already one of the smallest in the federal government. Its staffing of just over 4,100 was cut by more than half and seven of the agency’s 12 regional civil rights offices were shuttered.

Despite the Trump administration’s claims that the firings were to enhance the agency’s efficiency, Joun wrote that the “record abundantly reveals that Defendants’ true intention is to effectively dismantle the Department” without congressional approval. There is “no evidence that the RIF has actually made the Department more efficient,” Joun wrote. “Rather, the record is replete with evidence of the opposite.”

In two lawsuits filed by school districts, education groups, and more than a dozen states, plaintiffs outlined the predictable chaos the firings caused. All attorneys specializing in K-12 grants, equity grants, and grants for disabled students were fired. The entire staff of the Office of English Language Acquisition was eliminated. Reductions at the Federal Student Aid office hamstrung the remaining staff’s ability to oversee the federal government’s $1.6 trillion student loan portfolio. State education departments reported being unable to withdraw already allocated federal funds and receive reimbursements. 

The department’s Office for Civil Rights has been responsible for investigating violations of and enforcing federal anti-discrimination statutes, including Title IX for sex discrimination, Title VI for race discrimination, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. As detailed in the judge’s ruling, the sudden closures of more than half of the regional offices halted communication between civil rights investigators and students and their families. 

One of the fired employees, Ariel Shepetovskiy, an attorney in the Cleveland Office for Civil Rights who joined the department in September, told me that she was locked out of the case management system even before she received her RIF notice. The entire staff of the Cleveland office was eliminated, with no communication from the department detailing plans for transferring existing cases to the remaining offices. 

“Many people at OCR have been there for years, for decades, and have built really, really long and strong careers, but the other thing that they’ve been building is relationships,” Shepetovskiy says. “Now all of the expertise and all of those relationships are gone.”

Most Education Department responsibilities are codified by law and cannot be eliminated without an act of Congress. Bypassing Congress completely in their evisceration of the agency, Trump, McMahon, and the administration’s Republican allies in Congress have offered suggestions for where its responsibilities could be transferred. The Department of Justice could handle civil rights complaints, for example, and the Department of Health and Human Services could oversee funding allocations under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. As my colleague Julia Métraux has reported, the archconservative blueprint Project 2025 suggested that IDEA funds be administered through the Administration for Community Living. Meanwhile, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. moved to eliminate that agency in late March.

The plaintiffs, Joun emphasized, are likely to succeed in arguing that the RIF served to effectively render the department unable to perform its statutory duties. In addition to blocking the firings, the preliminary injunction halts further implementation of Trump’s executive order to dismantle the department. Joun ordered the Trump administration to provide a status report within 72 hours on steps taken to restore the agency “to the status quo” that had existed before the president was inaugurated.

Declarations in the proceedings, Joun wrote, “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.”