Oregon-Led Coalition Secures Court Order Halting Trump’s Plan to Dismantle Education Department

A successful lawsuit, which included Oregon in a 21-state coalition of attorneys general seeking an injunction to stop the Trump administration’s attempts to dismantle the Education Department (ED), concluded yesterday with an injunction barring the defendants from implementing President Trump’s March 20 and March 21 Executive Orders (EOs) and reinstating federal employees terminated on or after January 20, among other relief.

Department Of Education Lawsuit: States Win Injunction Against Trump Administration

Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield joined a coalition of 20 other attorneys general seeking a preliminary injunction to stop the Trump administration from dismantling the Education Department after it announced plans to eliminate 50 percent of ED’s workforce on March 13.

The Judge confirmed that the record abundantly reveals that the Defendants’ true intention is to dismantle the ED without an effective authorizing statute.

The court order, handed down in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts by Judge Myong J. Joun, noted the massive reduction in force (“RIF”), cutting the Department’s staff by half.

Trump’s EO directed the Secretary to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education.”

Judge Joun also noted how the massive reduction in staff has made it effectively impossible for the Department to carry out its statutorily mandated functions and said the plaintiffs have shown that they are likely to suffer irreparable harm in the form of “financial uncertainty and delay damaging student education, impeded access to vital knowledge upon which students, districts, and educators rely, and loss of essential services provided by the office of Federal Student Aid and the Office for Civil Rights as well as delays and uncertainty in receiving millions in federal educational funding, which jeopardizes their missions of ensuring an educated citizenry and providing quality education.

In the preliminary injunction, the Judge ordered the defendants to:

• Stop carrying out the reduction-in-force announced in Trump’s EOs of March 20 and 21;
• Not give effect to or reinstate the March EOs;
• Reinstate federal employees whose employment was terminated or otherwise eliminated on or after January 20 as part of the RIF announced on March 11 and restore the Department to the status quo to carry out its statutory functions.
• The defendants must file a status report with the Court within 72 hours of this Order’s entry describing all steps they have taken to comply with it, and every week thereafter until the Department is restored to the status quo prior to January 20, 2025.

Rayfield said, “This court order is a necessary step to stop a reckless plan that would hurt Oregon students and families. We need to protect those services.”