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In what might have been the most direct and consequential judicial challenge to the vast executive powers Donald Trump claims over the federal government, a federal judge in Massachusetts has put a stop to the dismantling of the Department of Education. As the Washington Post explains, it’s not one of those emergency orders that simply slows down the carnage but a direct reversal of an administration action, though it will definitely be appealed:
A federal judge on Thursday ordered the reinstatement of nearly 1,400 fired federal workers at the Education Department, delivering a major setback for President Donald Trump’s plan to dismantle the agency.
U.S. District Judge Myong J. Joun issued a preliminary injunction that compels the department to immediately bring back workers who were laid off on or after Jan. 20 as part of the reduction-in-force announced March 11 …
“A department without enough employees to perform statutorily mandated functions is not a department at all,” Joun wrote in his order. “This court cannot be asked to cover its eyes while the Department’s employees are continuously fired and units are transferred out until the Department becomes a shell of itself.”
The demolition job at DoE was justified in March as part of a wave of so-called reductions-in-force, an ostensibly legitimate procedure for eliminating government positions in order to improve efficiencies or carry out agency reorganizations. The RIFs were “paused” until recently thanks to a temporary order from a different federal judge (California’s Susan Illston) that was focused on mass firings of probationary employees; that order has expired for now, and the Joun order moves to the fore of the wide-ranging fight. What makes his decision noteworthy is its bluntness in describing the education layoffs as a transparent effort to usurp congressional prerogatives, as NBC News reported:
“There is … 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 the 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.”
The administration had conceded in the court proceedings that eliminating the department requires congressional action (a point also conceded by Education secretary Linda McMahon in her Senate confirmation hearings) but was pretty clearly using the RIF to cripple the agency, not to make it more “efficient.” It didn’t help the plausibility of the RIF scam that Trump had separately issued an executive order on March 20 instructing McMahon to find ways to close the doors.
As usual, the administration greeted this setback with an ad hominem attack on the judge, a Biden appointee, as a spokesperson put it:
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.
This is one case (there will be others) that will eventually force the Supreme Court to provide some clarity about executive takeovers of congressional authority under the guise of actual presidential powers applied haphazardly and, in this case, counterproductively. Claiming that an agency’s efficiency will be improved by firing half its employees and halting much of what it’s supposed to be doing is only credible if you’re leaning over backward to let Trump do as he wishes, which in this case is to close a department authorized by Congress. How far the Trump-shaped Court chooses to lean is very much in question and will affect domestic policymaking for many years to come.
