Lawyers for the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to allow it to move ahead with plans to dismantle the Education Department by lifting a lower court order that had prevented department workers from being fired.
The request came as an emergency application, the latest in a flurry of such appeals to the Supreme Court filed since the start of the second Trump administration.
President Trump signed an executive order on March 20 that instructed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to begin shutting down her agency, a move that requires approval by Congress and that set the stage for the legal fight over the federal government’s role in the country’s schools.
In Friday’s filing, Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked the justices to overturn a temporary ruling issued in late May by a federal judge in Massachusetts that had ordered government officials to reinstate thousands of fired workers.
Judge Myong J. Joun of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts issued a preliminary injunction in the lawsuit on May 22, a setback for the administration.
In his filing to the justices, Mr. Sauer argued that the lower court judge had “thwarted the executive branch’s authority to manage the Department of Education.”
A pair of school districts in Massachusetts, the American Federation of Teachers and 21 Democratic state attorneys general filed a lawsuit in March, seeking to block Mr. Trump’s executive order. They also sought to walk back a massive round of layoffs in the Education Department announced that month that would affect about half of its employees.
Judge Joun sided against the administration, finding that the government’s actions may have amounted to an illegal shutdown of the agency, which by law only Congress has the authority to abolish.
On June 4, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit upheld Judge Joun’s temporary order. The court found that the challengers were likely to suffer substantial injury were the order to be lifted, as the layoffs would make it difficult for the department to carry out its statutory obligations.
The justices requested that responses to the application be filed by June 13.
The case marks the second time that Judge Joun has been asked to examine the Trump administration’s efforts to reshape education policy. Judge Joun temporarily ordered the Trump administration in March to release $65 million in teacher-training grants that had been suspended as part of the president’s plans to end diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
In that matter, an appeals court upheld the temporary order. But the Supreme Court overruled Judge Joun in April and said that the grants could be suspended.
Abbie VanSickle covers the United States Supreme Court for The Times. She is a lawyer and has an extensive background in investigative reporting.
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