Trump administration asks Supreme Court to leave mass layoffs at Education Department in place
Source: AP
Updated 11:33 AM EDT, June 6, 2025
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday asked the Supreme Court to pause a court order to reinstate Education Department employees who were fired in mass layoffs as part of his plan to dismantle the agency.
The Justice Department’s emergency appeal to the high court said U.S. District Judge Myong Joun in Boston exceeded his authority last month when he issued a preliminary injunction reversing the layoffs of nearly 1,400 people and putting the broader plan on hold.
Joun’s order has blocked one of the Republican president’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 layoffs “will likely cripple the department.”
But Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote on Friday that Joun was substituting his policy preferences for those of the Trump administration. The layoffs help put in the place the “policy of streamlining the department and eliminating discretionary functions that, in the administration’s view, are better left to the states,” Sauer wrote.
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