A federal judge has slammed the brakes on President Donald Trump’s most audacious bid yet to abolish the U.S. Department of Education (ED), ruling that the mass layoffs ordered this spring were “a thinly veiled effort” to shutter the agency without a vote from Congress.
In a sweeping 88-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Myong Joun blocked the department from firing about 1,300 employees, barred officials from shifting its programs to other agencies and told Education Secretary Linda McMahon to restore every position eliminated since Trump returned to office in January 2025.
“The record abundantly reveals that defendants’ true intention is to effectively dismantle the department without an authorizing statute,” Joun wrote, adding that “the idea that defendants’ actions are merely a ‘reorganization’ is plainly not true.”
Joun’s order landed after a coalition of 21 Democratic attorneys general, teachers’ unions and two Massachusetts school districts argued that the layoffs had paralyzed key services such as student aid processing, civil rights enforcement and special education oversight. The judge said the plaintiffs showed “irreparable harm” to students and families who depend on those programs.
ED denounced the injunction and signaled an immediate appeal.
“Once again, a far-left judge has dramatically overstepped his authority, based on a complaint from biased plaintiffs, and issued an injunction against the obviously lawful efforts to make the Department of Education more efficient and functional for the American people,” spokesperson Madi Biedermann said.
Advocates for the agency’s workforce cheered the ruling.
“Today’s order means that the Trump administration’s disastrous mass firings of career civil servants are blocked while this wildly disruptive and unlawful agency action is litigated,” said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, which represents several plaintiffs.
Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers called it “a first step to reverse this war on knowledge and the undermining of broad-based opportunity.”
The decision is the second courtroom setback this week for the administration’s education agenda. On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman ordered the department to restore a long-standing desegregation grant to the Southern Education Foundation and rebuked efforts to gut the Office for Civil Rights—underscoring what he called a broader campaign to strip diversity programs from federal education policy.
Until a higher court rules, Joun has directed the department to file weekly reports showing progress toward rebuilding its staff and resuming normal operations. For now, Trump’s pledge to eliminate ED remains stalled at the courthouse door.
