Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, PUBLIC EMPLOYEES—U.S.: Preliminary injunction against Department of Education layoffs stayed pending appeal, (Jul 15, 2025)

By Jason Albright, J.D.

Justice Sotomayor, dissenting, wrote that the decision “hands the Executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out.”

In a brief, per curiam opinion issued July 14, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed a preliminary injunction that a Massachusetts federal district court had issued in May against the Trump administration’s attempt to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, pending disposition of the administration’s appeal of that injunction by the First Circuit. Justice Sotomayor, in a 19-page dissent joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, wrote that the Court’s decision is “indefensible” and “hands the Executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out.” “The majority,” Sotomayor wrote, “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” (McMahon v. New York, No. 24A1203 (U.S. July 14, 2025)).

“[N]ot a modern phenomenon.” Federal involvement in education, Justice Sotomayor argued in her dissent, “is not a modern phe­nomenon. For over 150 years, the Federal Government has played a critical role in supplementing and supporting the education provided by States, localities, and private insti­tutions.”

Organic statute. And in 1979, Congress enacted the Department of Education Organization Act to “strengthen the Federal commitment to ensuring access to equal educa­tional opportunity for every individual.” In service of that goal, observed Sotomayor, “the Act integrated the Federal Government’s educational programs into a new Cabinet­-level agency called the Department of Education.”

Congress tasked the Department of Education (DOE), in turn, “with administering a broad range of educational programs,” such as the federal student financial-aid system, federal grants for institutions of higher education, federal work-study programs, and federal funding for kindergarten through 12th grade.

Vast scale of statutory efforts. The scale of DOE’s statutory efforts, moreover, “is vast.” In June 2025, Sotomayor observed, DOE reported awarding more than $120 billion a year in federal student aid to more than 13 million stu­dents, and in 2020-21, the federal government distributed more than $100 billion in funding directly to public schools, rep­resenting around 11 percent of all funding for public ele­mentary and secondary schools across the country.

Equal access to education. And Congress has charged DOE “with ensuring equal access to education.” The DOE Office of Civil Rights, for example, “enforces several antidis­crimination laws as to federally funded educational pro­grams,” including Title VI, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin; Title IX, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex; and Title II of the ADA, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability.

Different position historically… Different administrations have, Justice Sotomayor noted, “taken different positions” on DOE’s “value and its proper role in the Nation’s system of education over the years,” and indeed, President Reagan submitted a proposal to Congress that would have abolished DOE. Reagan ultimately withdrew that proposal, however, after it found little support in Congress.

… but not this position. “Until now, however,” she observed, “Presidents have rec­ognized they lack the unilateral authority to eradicate a Department that Congress has tasked with fulfilling statu­tory duties.” President Trump, however, “has made clear that he intends to close the Department without Congress’s involvement.”

“[P]ut herself out of a job.” When nominating Linda McMahon to lead DOE, Trump announced that he had directed McMahon to “‘put herself out of a job.’”

RIF announced. Consistent with that directive, McMahon issued a memo on her first day in office indicating that she would lead DOE’s “final mission,” and on March 11, 2025, about a week into her tenure, she announced a RIF that would eliminate “nearly 50% of the Department’s workforce,” reducing the number of DOE employees from 4,133 to 2,183.

Statutorily-mandated offices eliminated completely. The RIF eliminated whole offices and teams within DOE, including the entire Of­fice of English Language Acquisition, which Congress tasked with administering the Department’s “bilingual ed­ucation programs,” 20 U. S. C. §3420; all employees within the Office of the General Counsel who specialize in K–12 education funding and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) grants; 7 of 12 regional divi­sions of the Office of Civil Rights; most of the Federal Stu­dent Aid office responsible for certifying schools so that their students can receive federal financial aid; and the en­tire unit of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilita­tive Services that is charged with providing technical assistance and guidance on complying with the IDEA.

“[F]inal mission” or “committment to efficiency”? And though the March 11 directive “touted the initiative as ‘part of the [Department’s] final mission,’” it also claimed the RIFs reflected a “‘com­mitment to efficiency.’” Despite asserting that DOE would “continue to deliver on all statutory programs that fall under the agency’s purview,” the directive did not, underscored Sotomayor, “explain how terminating half of the agency’s work force overnight would improve efficiency, nor how it would be able to continue carrying out its statutory functions.”

Total shutdown contemplated. Later, in statements to the press, McMahon confirmed the RIF was “the first step on the road to a total shutdown” of DOE, as directed by Trump.

EO 14242. On March 20, 2025, Trump formalized his di­rective to shut down DOE by signing Executive Or­der 14242, 90 Fed. Reg. 13679, titled “Closing the Department of Education and Returning Authority to the States.”

Transfer of statutory functions to other agencies. A day later, Trump announced that DOE would transfer some of its statutory functions to other federal agencies. Specifi­cally, DOE would “‘immediately’” move the stu­dent loan portfolio to the Small Business Administration, and the “‘special needs’” and “‘nutrition programs’” would be transferred to the Department of Health and Human Ser­vices.

States’ lawsuit. Following the March 11 directive and the resulting mass termination of DOE employees, a group of 20 states and the District of Columbia sued DOE in fed­eral court, arguing that the RIF “effec­tive[ly] dismantl[ed] the Department” and “incapacitat[ed] components of the Department responsible for performing functions mandated by statute.”

Preliminary injunction. The district court granted the states’ preliminary injunction motion. The court found that “the record abundantly re­veals that Defendants’ true intention is to effectively dis­mantle the Department without an authorizing statute,” and that the terminations would prevent DOE from “carry[ing] out its statutory functions.”

Stay denied by First Circuit. The government then appealed to the First Circuit, which denied its request to stay the preliminary injunction. The government, the First Circuit concluded, “d[id]not even attempt to engage with the District Court’s record-based findings about the extent of the [reduction in force],” “the intent behind both it and the transfer of functions to shut down the Department,” or “the disabling impact of those actions on the Department’s ability to carry out stat­utorily assigned functions.”

Emergency docket. “Rebuffed twice below,” Sotomayor observed, “the Government now tries its hand at seeking emergency relief from this Court.”

Judiciary’s role and separation of powers. “When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise,” Justice Sotomayor summarized, “it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it.” And the Court’s decision to intervene here—to lift an injunction supported by two lower courts—“is indefensible. It hands the Executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out.”

“The majority,” according to the dissent, “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.” The President “lacks unilateral authority to close a Cabinet-level agency. Congress created the Department and only Congress can abolish it. The President, too, may not refuse to carry out statutorily mandated functions as­signed to the Department, for he must ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.’”

Seizure of power to repeal federal law. “The record evidence credited by the District Court and unrebutted by the Government,” said the dissent, “thus leads to one conclu­sion: The Executive has seized for itself the power to repeal federal law by way of mass terminations, in direct contra­vention of the Take Care Clause and our Constitution’s sep­aration of powers.”

Relative harms and threat to nation’s education system. Finally, addressing the equities in the case, Justice Sotomayor noted that “[t]he Government has continued to press a plainly pretextual explanation for the mass firings in court, even as the Executive makes in­consistent statements to the public.”

Meanwhile, the relative harms “are also vastly dispro­portionate.” Though the government would “suffer pocketbook harms from having to pay employees that it sought to fire as the litigation proceeds,” the “harm to this Nation’s education system and indi­vidual students” is “of far greater magnitude.”

“Lifting the District Court’s injunction,” predicted Sotomayor, “will unleash untold harm, delaying or denying educational opportunities and leaving students to suffer from discrimination, sexual assault, and other civil rights violations without the federal resources Congress intended.” The majority, her dissent concluded, “apparently deems it more important to free the Government from pay­ing employees it had no right to fire than to avert these very real harms while the litigation continues.”

The case is No. 24A1203.

Judge: Per curiam.

Attorneys: Moez Mansoor Kaba (Hueston Hennigan) for Linda McMahon. Barbara Dale Underwood, Office of the Solicitor General, for New York.

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