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On Thursday a judge ordered more than 2,000 fired employees of the Education Department reinstated.
Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Tierney L. Cross/Getty Images | Matveev_Aleksandr and raweenuttapong/iStock/Getty Images
A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from firing thousands of employees at the Department of Education in a decisive rebuke of this spring’s sweeping reduction in force and the executive branch’s efforts to weaken the Education Department.
Judge Myong Joun rejected the administration’s argument that the layoffs, which affected half of the department’s workforce, were part of a “reorganization” aimed at improving efficiency and said evidence showed the administration’s “true intention is to effectively dismantle the Department without an authorizing statute.” His order also prevents the department from implementing President Donald Trump’s March directive to dismantle the agency.
Joun of the District of Massachusetts also said the injunction to rehire the fired staffers was necessary in order to restore the department’s ability to accomplish its core functions and statutorily mandated responsibilities.
“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,” Joun wrote in his 88-page ruling. “Plaintiffs have demonstrated that the Department will not be able to carry out its statutory functions—and in some cases, is already unable to do so.”
Reports of systemic failings and overloaded staff have streamed out of the beleaguered department ever since the March layoffs, from an untouched backlog of complaints at the Office for Civil Rights to the piling up of applications for student loan repayment and forgiveness plans.
The injunction, handed down Thursday morning, means the administration must reinstate more than 2,000 Education Department employees and reopen regional offices that were shuttered during the reduction in force.
The administration has already said it has issued a challenge to the ruling. Madi Biedermann, the department’s deputy assistant secretary for communication, said the administration has already appealed.
In an email to Inside Higher Ed, Biedermann decried the decision, calling Joun a “far-left judge” who “dramatically overstepped his authority” and maintaining that the layoffs were “lawful efforts to make the Department of Education more efficient and functional.”
“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,” she wrote.
A spokesperson for the Association of American University Professors, one of the plaintiffs in the case, wrote in a statement that they were "thrilled" with the decision.
“Eliminating the [Education Department] would hurt everyday Americans, severely limit access to education, eviscerate funding for HBCUs and [tribal colleges and universities] while benefiting partisan politicians and private corporations," they wrote.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon defended the layoffs at a budget hearing just a day prior to the ruling. She said the goal was to “wind down the bureaucracy” of the department, and that while she hoped to have congressional support to dismantle it eventually, the administration did not intend to so on its own.
Joun’s decision undercuts that defense. In the budget hearing, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat of Connecticut, told McMahon that the cuts were “unlawful” and a usurpation of congressional authority.
“As long as you continue to deliberately and flagrantly defy the law, you will continue to lose in court,” DeLauro said.
The injunction is the latest in a string of court orders challenging the Trump administration’s rapid cuts to federal agencies in its first 100 days, often under the supervision of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. DOGE was responsible for the vast majority of the Education Department layoffs, according to McMahon’s House testimony Wednesday.
Joun’s ruling wasn’t the only one aimed at undoing the administration’s Education Department cuts. Judge Paul Friedman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia also ordered that the department restore grant funding to a Southern nonprofit that has helped further school desegregation efforts since the 1960s. The grant had been defunded as part of the administration’s push to eliminate spending on diversity, equity and inclusion.
