Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, REMEDIES, DAMAGES—1st Cir.: Government entitled to stay pending appeal of injunction preventing DOE’s OCR layoffs, (Sep 30, 2025)

By Kathleen Kapusta, J.D.

“In this stay posture and at this preliminary stage of the litigation, however, we cannot conclude that this case differs enough from McMahon to reach a contrary result to the Supreme Court's order staying the injunction in McMahon.”

This case—involving a challenge to the government’s March RIFs that reduced by half the staff of the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR)—is in effect a subset of McMahon v. New York, which challenged the RIFs on the entire DOE, the First Circuit concluded. And because the Supreme Court, in McMahon, stayed a district court’s injunction that preliminarily prevented the DOE from implementing the RIFs, the government made a strong showing it was entitled to the same interim relief here, said the court, granting the government’s motion for a stay of the district court’s injunction in this case pending appeal (Victim Rights Law Center v. U.S. Department of Education, No. 25-1787 (1st Cir. Sept. 29, 2025)).

A tale of two suits. When the DOE, in March 2025, announced a reduction in force intended to cut its staff by close to fifty percent, multiple lawsuits were filed challenging the RIF in whole or in part, including this suit, which was brought by two former public school students and their parents, as well as an advocacy group, the Victim Rights Law Center. The plaintiffs alleged they were forced to withdraw from school due to unaddressed bullying and harassment on the basis of disability and race. They filed complaints with the OCR that were never addressed because of the RIF-imposed staffing cuts at the OCR.

The district court found the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of several of their claims, as the RIF, which eliminated about half of OCR’s staff, left “OCR with the capacity to address only a small fraction of the complaints that it receives, making it impossible for OCR to comply with its statutory and regulatory obligations.” According to the court, the DOE's implementation of the RIF likely violated the Administrative Procedure Act as it was likely arbitrary and capricious and contrary to law.

McMahon. In McMahon, a group of 22 states, two public school districts, and five labor unions challenged the RIF as it applied department-wide. In that case, which had been assigned to the same district court judge, the court found that the RIF’s implementation likely violated the APA, again because it was likely arbitrary and capricious and contrary to law. As a result, the McMahon court enjoined implementation of the RIF as a whole.

The government then moved for a stay pending appeal, which the First Circuit denied in June. Two weeks later, the district court issued the injunction in the instant case, preliminarily enjoining the implementation of the RIF as to the OCR. About a month after that, the Supreme Court, without providing any explanation, stayed the McMahon injunction pending appeal, permitting the department-wide RIF to go into effect.

In light of McMahon, the government asked the district court in the instant case to vacate the injunction or issue a stay pending appeal. When the district court declined, the government appealed, arguing that this case is a “lesser-included” version of McMahon.

Subset. Agreeing that this case was effectively a subset of McMahon, the appeals court found McMahon controlled. “First, and most critically,” said the court, “the essential facts here were before the Supreme Court in McMahon, and the Plaintiff-Appellees have not presented any argument to us that those facts have changed in any material way, if at all, since the McMahon order in mid-July.” In addition, the district court in McMahon, discussed the plaintiffs here at some length and also identified as one of the four irreparable harms supporting an injunction the "loss of essential services provided by the... [OCR]."

Noting further that the McMahon plaintiffs invoked the RIF's effect on OCR in their briefing before the Supreme Court, the First Circuit found that “the facts and circumstances that underpin this case -- discussed in the briefing and underlying order in McMahon -- are a subset of the facts and circumstances in McMahon and were before the Supreme Court when it issued its order in that case.”

Legal issues. The appeals court also found overlapping legal issues in the two cases, noting as one example, that the district court, in the context of its "discrete and final agency action" analysis, explained that it was reaching the same conclusions it did in McMahon for the same reasons: "Defendants’ contentions that their actions are not final... [are] unconvincing for the same reasons I held in the Lead Case."

Relief. Moreover, said the First Circuit, the injunctions in both cases provided similar relief concerning the same agency action. “That the two cases involve an identical challenged agency action and similar relief supports our determination that the McMahon stay order must inform our exercise of equitable discretion here even though, based on the text of the McMahon order, we do not know the grounds for the Supreme Court's decision to grant a stay in that case,” the court explained.

And while the court acknowledged that the plaintiffs here identified potential legal distinctions between their situation and those of the McMahon plaintiffs, including Article III standing, it found those distinctions “insufficiently material for us to conclude—at this early stage—that the standing analysis justifies a different stay outcome here than in the Supreme Court's grant of a stay in McMahon.” Nor was the difference in the scope of the injunctions in the two cases enough to make this case not "like" McMahon at this preliminary stage.

Concluding that “this case is in effect a subset of another in which the Supreme Court has already issued a stay pending appeal, thus permitting the RIF challenged there to proceed,” the court granted the government’s motion for a stay pending appeal.

Aframe concurrence. In a short concurrence, Judge Aframe wrote separately to “emphasize that while the unreasoned order in McMahon was essential to resolving the government's stay appeal, that order's import will be limited as this case moves ahead.”

Judge Aframe explained that the court has “decided the interim relief question here based on Boyle's command for treating like cases alike and the limited information before us about the reasons grounding the McMahon stay. Presumably, this case will carry on and the record will grow. If we confront this case again, it may well be after the district court has issued a final decision on the merits. At that point, the legal question will not be governed by Boyle. Instead, the legal question will be whether the plaintiffs have met their burden to show that the RIF is unlawfully impeding the operation of the Office of Civil Rights such that the administration is failing to execute a key feature of Congress's plan for providing universal equal access to public education. The Supreme Court's unreasoned stay order in McMahon will have little to do with deciding that ultimate question.”

The case is No. 25-1787.

Judge: Per curiam.

Attorneys: Patrick Graham Archer (Public Justice) for Victim Rights Law Center. Michael Benjamin Bruns, U.S. Department of Justice, for U.S. Department of Education.

Companies: Victim Rights Law Center

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