The US Supreme Court cleared the Education Department to withhold money for teacher-training projects in eight states, intervening for the first time to bolster President Donald Trump’s campaign to wipe out federal spending programs he opposes.
In a Friday order, five of the court’s conservative-leaning justices halted a trial court ruling that had temporarily required the Education Department to keep covering incurred expenses in the eight suing states. The Democratic-led states went to court after the department canceled 104 of 109 grants under two training programs because of concerns about diversity, equity and inclusion.
Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s three liberal members indicated that they would have denied the government’s request.
In an unsigned statement, the majority wrote that the Trump administration was likely to win in arguing that a Boston federal judge lacked authority to order the payments be made under a federal law that governs agency actions. The case hasn’t reached a final ruling on the merits, and the justices found that the Education Department persuasively argued that it risked not being able to claw back the grant money if it paid it out now and then won later on.
The majority also wrote that although the high court normally wouldn’t take action on a temporary order, the lower court judge’s directive had the “hallmarks” of a longer-term injunction.
It’s one of the first cases to reach the high court over Trump’s efforts to transform the federal government and dramatically scale back spending through a torrent of far-reaching executive orders. The administration cast its Supreme Court request as having broader significance for the 190-plus lawsuits pending in US courts.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in a dissent joined by the senior liberal on the court, Sonia Sotomayor, called it “beyond puzzling that a majority of justices conceive of the government’s application as an emergency.”
“It is likewise baffling that anyone is persuaded that the equities favor the government when the government does not even argue that the lower courts erred in concluding that it likely behaved unlawfully,” Jackson wrote. “This application should have been denied for numerous obvious and independent reasons, and the Court does itself — and the legal process — no favors in deciding to grant it.”
Justice Elena Kagan also dissented.
Representatives of the Education Department, Justice Department and White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for the California attorney general’s office, which is leading the Democratic officials who sued, also did not immediately respond.
Deputy Solicitor General Sarah Harris told the high court that federal judges are “forcing the executive branch to resurrect and keep paying out terminated grants and contracts, micromanaging how and when the executive branch pays.” Harris, who served as the administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer until the Senate confirmed Dean John Sauer as US solicitor general on April 3, said that leaving the teacher-training order in force would invite “countless copycat orders.”
The grant programs were designed to help with the recruitment and training of teachers and principals in underserved areas, including high-poverty communities.
In near-identical letters sent in February, the Education Department said each grant was “inconsistent with, and no longer effectuates, Department priorities.” The letters didn’t specify why that was the case, though the department mentioned DEI initiatives as one possible reason.
US District Judge Myong Joun in Boston issued a temporary restraining order on March 10 after concluding that the states are likely to succeed in their lawsuit. The states say the cancellations are “arbitrary and capricious” in violation of the main federal law that governs administrative proceedings.
Joun’s order, known as a TRO, was scheduled to expire on April 7. He has been considering a request for a longer-term order requiring the administration to continue making payments on the grants.
The amount of money directly at stake was relatively small. The grants covered by Joun’s order have $65 million in remaining funds to be paid out to universities and other recipients, and the states said only a “small fraction” of that might have been disbursed in the remaining days before Joun’s TRO expired.
The states involved in the case are California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, New York and Wisconsin.
The administration said Supreme Court intervention was needed nonetheless because the Education Department wouldn’t have any reliable method to recoup any wrongly disbursed funds.
The case is Department of Education v. California, 24A910.
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