Dive Brief:

• A group of unions and school districts on Monday sued President Donald Trump, U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and the Education Department over the administration’s plan to wind down the agency. 
• Plaintiffs, including the American Association of University Professors and American Federation of Teachers, allege that mass layoffs at the Education Department and Trump’s executive order last week directing McMahon to "facilitate" the agency's closure “are unlawful and harm millions of students, school districts, and educators across the nation.” 
• The 65-page lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, seeks to block Trump’s order and reinstate the agency's fired staff. Another coalition of advocacy groups on Monday was readying a lawsuit with similar allegations and also seeking to prevent the administration from closing the Education Department.

Dive Insight:

Trump’s March 20 order tasked McMahon with taking all steps necessary to “facilitate the closure of the Department of Education,″ with the open-ended stipulation that she do so “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.” It followed by less than two weeks the department’s announcement of mass layoffs amounting to roughly half its staff.

Closing the Education Department altogether requires congressional action, which has been considered unlikely given the closely divided Congress and the need for a Senate supermajority of 60 votes to do so.

In a statement issued following Trump's order, McMahon said that the department would “follow the law and eliminate the bureaucracy responsibly by working through Congress to ensure a lawful and orderly transition.”  

But despite such assurances, Trump's order has been met with widespread outcry and alarm from education and advocacy groups, congressional Democrats, and other stakeholders. Now, it’s the target of litigation as well.

Without the department, “access to education for working class Americans will decrease,” AAUP President Todd Wolfson said in a statement Monday on the lawsuit's filing. “Funding for college education will be stripped away, programs for students with disabilities and students living in poverty will be eviscerated, and enforcement of civil rights laws against race- or sex-based discrimination in higher education will disappear.”

The AAUP and other plaintiffs argue that Trump and his administration lack authority to carry out their plans for the Education Department. 

“First, the Department of Education is created by statute and cannot be abolished, dismantled, or closed by the President or Secretary,” the plaintiffs said in their complaint. “That is equally true whether this closure is accomplished by an Executive Order, by mass firings of the Department’s employees (without staff, there is no Department; just a building), by transferring Department functions to other agencies, or by any other means.”

They also argue that winding down the department violates the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act — by eliminating staff tasked with administering the law at the department — as well as civil rights statutes and other statutes, such as those giving the Education Department authority for overseeing financial aid. 

On Friday, Trump said special education operations would move to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, while federal student loan oversight would go to the Small Business Administration, an agency McMahon spearheaded for a period during Trump’s first term. The lawsuit argues that federal law vests responsibility for both the federal student aid program and IDEA in the Education Department, and they therefore can’t be lawfully transferred to another agency without congressional action.

In an emailed statement Monday, Madi Biedermann, the agency's deputy assistant secretary for communications, said that “sunsetting the Department of Education will be done in partnership with Congress and national and state leaders to ensure all statutorily required programs are managed responsibly and where they best serve students and families.”

Biedermann also noted, “To date, no action has been taken to move federally mandated programs out of the Department of Education,” and said “the union is also forcing the Department to waste resources on litigation instead of the programs the union claims to care about.” 

Meanwhile, a second coalition of groups announced Monday it was readying a suit against the Trump administration over the move to abolish the Education Department. Plaintiffs in that lawsuit include the NAACP and the National Education Association, along with parents of public school children.  

They likewise argue that the administration lacks constitutional and statutory authority to dismantle the department and seek judicial intervention to block the effort.

“Eliminating or effectively shuttering the Department puts at risk the millions of vulnerable students, including those from low-income families, English learners, homeless students, rural students and others, who depend on Department support,” the groups said in a press release on Monday. 

Various Trump administration attacks on higher education funding, practices and institutions have been challenged in court since the president took office. A judge ruled last week that the Education Department can’t terminate teacher training grants created through congressionally appropriated programs. 

A judge has also temporarily blocked the National Institutes of Health from enforcing a 15% cap on indirect cost funding to research institutions, a move that would cost many research universities tens of millions of dollars in federal grant funds. 

Meanwhile, a federal appellate court overturned a preliminary injunction barring the administration from enforcing an executive order that targets diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at education institutions. The panel did not weigh in on the order’s legality, saying the court would set an expedited briefing schedule to consider the case — leaving open the possibility that individual enforcement actions could raise future legal and constitutional issues.