Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, LITIGATION NEWS, TRENDS—NAACP, NEA, and others file suit over dismantling of Education Department, (Mar 25, 2025)

By Brandi O. Brown, J.D.

“[T]he Constitution gives power over ‘the establishment of offices [and] the determination of their functions and jurisdiction’ to Congressnot to the President or any officer working under him.”

The NAACP, National Education Association (NEA), and various other entities and individuals have filed suit against the Trump administration alleging that the destruction of the Department of Education is an ultra vires action by the administration and violates the separation of powers and the Constitution’s Take Care, Spending, and Appropriation Clauses. They also allege that it is contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious, in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.

“[T]he Constitution gives power over ‘the establishment of offices [and] the determination of their functions and jurisdiction’ to Congress—not to the President or any officer working under him,” they contend, and “[e]xecutive agencies like the Department ‘are creatures of statute,’ brought into existence by Congress and taken out of existence only by Congress, through bicameralism and presentment.”

“[I]f Congress cannot delegate far more modest grants of regulatory authority through ‘modest words,’ ‘vague terms,’ or ‘subtle devices,’” they contend, “then an agency surely lacks any constitutional or statutory authority to cease its statutorily mandated functions, or hollow out its workforce so dramatically that it lacks the capacity to execute them, without any direction from Congress at all.”

The case is No. 25-965.

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