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Education Department layoffs: Why Supreme Court's decision is ‘willfully blind’ and ‘naive’, judges explain
The Supreme Court allowed President Trump to execute his plan to dismantle the Education Department back on track and lay off nearly 1,400 employees
A divided Supreme Court on Monday allowed President Donald Trump to execute his plan to dismantle the Education Department back on track and lay off nearly 1,400 employees. Three liberal judges, in their dissent, slammed the decision, saying it was ‘naive’ and ‘willfully blind’. The decision pauses the order by Boston's Judge Myong Joun, who issued a preliminary injunction reversing the layoffs and calling into question the broader plan.
The layoffs ‘will likely cripple the department’, Joun wrote. While the majority did not explain its decision to back Trump, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Elena Kagan were quick to publish their dissent.
“When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it,” Sotomayor wrote.
“It hands the Executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out,” the three justices further added. “The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naive, but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave."
Meanwhile, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said it’s a ‘shame’ it took the Supreme Court’s intervention to let Trump’s plan move ahead.
“Today, the Supreme Court again confirmed the obvious: the President of the United States, as the head of the Executive Branch, has the ultimate authority to make decisions about staffing levels, administrative organization, and day-to-day operations of federal agencies,” McMahon said in a statement.
Earlier on Monday, over 20 states sued the administration over billions of dollars in frozen education funding for after-school care, summer programs and more.
Education Department employees who were targeted by the layoffs have been on paid leave since March, according to a union that represents some of the agency’s staff.
Joun’s order had prevented the department from fully terminating them, though none had been allowed to return to work, according to the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252. Without Joun’s order, the workers would have been terminated in early June.
The Education Department had said earlier in June that it was “actively assessing how to reintegrate” the employees. A department email asked them to share whether they had gained other employment, saying the request was meant to “support a smooth and informed return to duty.”
The current case involves two consolidated lawsuits that said 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 legal action was filed by a coalition of 21 Democratic attorneys general.
The suits argued that layoffs 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.
(With AP inputs)
