The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to pause a court order to reinstate Education Department employees who were fired in mass lay-offs as part of President Donald Trump’s plan to dismantle the agency.
The Justice Department’s emergency appeal to the high court on Friday said US District Judge Myong Joun in Boston exceeded his authority last month when he issued a preliminary injunction reversing the lay-offs of nearly 1,400 people and putting the broader plan on hold.
Mr Joun’s order has blocked one of Mr Trump’s biggest campaign promises and effectively stalled the effort to wind down the department.
A federal appeals court refused to put the order on hold while the administration appealed.
The judge wrote that the lay-offs “will likely cripple the department”.
But Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote on Friday that Mr Joun was substituting his policy preferences for those of the Trump administration.
The lay-offs help put in place the “policy of streamlining the department and eliminating discretionary functions that, in the administration’s view, are better left to the states”, Mr Sauer wrote.
He also pointed out that the Supreme Court in April voted 5-4 to block Mr Joun’s earlier order seeking to keep in place Education Department teacher-training grants.
The current case involves two consolidated lawsuits that said Mr Trump’s plan amounted to an illegal closure of the Education Department.
One suit was filed by the Somerville and Easthampton school districts in Massachusetts along with the American Federation of Teachers and other education groups. The other suit was filed by a coalition of 21 Democratic attorneys general.
The suits argued that the lay-offs left the department unable to carry out responsibilities required by Congress, including duties to support special education, distribute financial aid and enforce civil rights laws.
Mr Trump has made it a priority to shut down the Education Department, though he has acknowledged that only Congress has the authority to do that.
In the meantime, Mr Trump issued a March order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to wind it down “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law”.
Mr Trump later said the department’s functions will be parcelled to other agencies, suggesting federal student loans should be managed by the Small Business Administration and programmes involving students with disabilities would be absorbed by the Department of Health and Human Services. Those changes have not yet happened.
The president argues that the Education Department has been overtaken by liberals and has failed to spur improvements to the nation’s lagging academic scores. He has promised to “return education to the states”.
Opponents note that K-12 education is already mostly overseen by states and cities.
Democrats have blasted the Trump administration’s Education Department budget, which seeks a 15% budget cut including a 4.5 billion dollar cut in K-12 funding as part of the agency’s downsizing.
