Trump cannot proceed with gutting US Education Department, court rules

BOSTON — A federal appeals court on Wednesday declined to lift a judge’s order blocking President Donald Trump’s administration from carrying out his executive order to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education and requiring it to reinstate employees who were terminated in a mass layoff.

The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Trump administration’s request to put on hold an injunction issued by a lower-court judge at the urging of several Democratic-led states, school districts and teachers’ unions.

The U.S. Department of Justice had asked for a swift ruling from the 1st Circuit so that it could promptly take the case up to the 6-3 conservative majority U.S. Supreme Court if the appeals court did not rule in its favor.

But Chief U.S. Circuit Judge David Barron, writing for a panel of three judges who were all appointed by Democratic presidents, said a stay was not warranted given the extensive findings a trial judge made about the impact mass firings at the department would have on its ability to function.

“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,” he said.

The lawsuits were filed after Secretary of Education Linda McMahon in March announced plans to carry out a mass termination of over 1,300 employees, which would cut the department’s staff by half as part of what it said was its “final mission.”