Trump Administration Asks the Supreme Court to Let Him Undo Department of Education

Articles | June 6, 2025 | by Catholics for Catholics

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A lower court temporarily blocked the dismantling of the federal agency.

By Catholics for Catholics

In its goal to end the U.S. Department of Education, the Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to permit it to recommence taking down the organization, which a lower court had formerly stopped the course. 

Last month, a district court had issued an injunction which blocked the process, ordering the government to rehire some of the staff that had been laid off, according to The Epoch Times.

A federal district court issued an injunction last month blocking the process, directing the government to rehire some of the departmental employees who had been laid off. “Each day this preliminary injunction remains in effect subjects the Executive Branch to judicial micromanagement of its day-to-day operations,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in the new emergency application.

The laying off of 1,378 department employees “effectuates the Administration’s policy of streamlining the Department and eliminating discretionary functions that, in the Administration’s view, are better left to the States.”

Still, the federal government admitted that only Congress can abolish the department and that the government needs to “retain sufficient staff to continue fulfilling statutorily mandated functions and [that it] has kept the personnel that … are necessary for those tasks,” Sauer wrote, according to The Times. One of the campaign promises of President Donald Trump was to shut down the department.

The President signed an Executive Order in March, promising to terminate the agency, which he said “has entrenched the education bureaucracy and sought to convince America that Federal control over education is beneficial.”

The department “does not educate anyone” and “maintains a public relations office that includes over 80 staffers at a cost of more than $10 million per year,” the executive order states.

But according to The Times, in a May 22 order, U.S. District Judge Myong Joun of Massachusetts directed the government to hire anew the laid-off employees and reverse other actions aimed at downsizing the department.