WASHINGTON – A federal judge on Thursday temporarily reinstated hundreds of Education Department workers laid off by the Trump administration and blocked the president’s executive order attempting to dismantle the decades-old agency.
District Court Judge Myong J. Joun, a Biden appointee in Boston, said the White House’s decision to fire more than 1,300 workers in March has prevented the federal government from effectively implementing legally required programs and services.
At the request of a coalition of states, he granted a preliminary injunction to rehire the staffers while a lawsuit plays out over whether the employees were illegally fired.
States and school districts are experiencing “delays and uncertainty in their receipt of federal educational funding, amounting in the millions, which jeopardize their missions of ensuring an educated citizenry and providing quality education,” the judge wrote in the order. “Such delays and uncertainty raise immediate predicaments about whether there will be sufficient staff and student programming for the 2025-2026 school year and hinder long term planning.”
Though the decision is provisional, it may provide short-term relief to thousands of K-12 schools and colleges, some of which have struggled as key elements of the American education system have begun to falter since the Trump administration effectively cut the Education Department in half.
The judge also blocked an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in March aimed at taking “all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education.” Only Congress has the authority to abolish federal agencies. Though both legislative chambers are currently controlled by Republicans, the GOP would need support from Democrats to pass any bills dismantling the Education Department.
The executive order “goes directly against Congress’s intent in creating the Department,” the judge ruled.
“While it may be true that the President has the power to remove executive officers,” he wrote, “Defendants cite to no case that this power includes the power to dismantle Congressionally created departments and programs through mass terminations.”
The ruling is a major win for agency workers. It’s not clear, however, how many of them will be willing to return to their old jobs.
The Trump administration would not immediately commit to complying with the ruling. In a statement to USA TODAY, Madi Biedermann, an Education Department spokeswoman, said the agency would challenge the judge’s decision on an emergency basis.
“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,” she 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. This ruling is not in the best interest of American students or families.”
Teachers unions rejoiced on Thursday. Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, which is a plaintiff in the lawsuit, called the ruling a first step in reversing what she called a “war on knowledge.”
“Today, the court rightly rejected one of the administration’s very first illegal, and consequential, acts: abolishing the federal role in education,” she said in a statement.
The injunction made perfect sense to Rachel Gittleman, who worked in the department’s Federal Student Aid office helping student loan borrowers until she was laid off in March. Despite the harsh environment at the Education Department, she said a lot of her colleagues “really want to go back.”
“It is a very hard and personal decision for every one of us,” she said.
(This story has been updated to add new information.)
Zachary Schermele is an education reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach him by email at zschermele@usatoday.com. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele and Bluesky at @zachschermele.bsky.social.
