Trump asks Supreme Court to let him gut Education Department
In an emergency appeal, the administration said the court should lift a judge's order blocking Trump from carrying out those moves while they're being challenged by Democratic-led states, school districts and teachers' unions.
"The Constitution vests the Executive Branch, not district courts, with the authority to make judgments about how many employees are needed to carry out an agency's statutory functions, and whom they should be," Solicitor General John Sauer told the Supreme Court.
U.S. District Judge Myong Joun 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. Such changes can't be made without the approval of Congress, which created the department in 1979, Joun ruled.
The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals backed that decision. The court said the administration provided no evidence to counter Joun's "record-based findings about the disabling impact" of the mass firings and the transfer of some functions to other agencies.
"What is at stake in this case, the District Court found, was whether a nearly half-century-old cabinet department would be permitted to carry out its statutorily assigned functions or prevented from doing so by a mass termination of employees aimed at implementing the effective closure of that department," Judge David Barron wrote for the panel of three circuit judges.
More: Trump can't erase the Education Department with an executive order. Here's why.
An executive order Trump signed in March directed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to "facilitate the closure of the Department of Education."
McMahon announced roughly half the agency's workforce would be eliminated through a combination of mass layoffs and voluntary buyouts. That would have reduced the staff from 4,133 workers when Trump began his second term in January to 2,183 workers.
The administration also wants the Small Business Administration to take over student loans and move special education services to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Joun's order blocked the administration from transferring those functions and required the department to reinstate fired workers.
The appeals court said Trump doesn't have to have as many Education Department employees as the previous administration but can't cut so many that the agency can't function as Congress intended.
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