On July 14, by a cryptic unsigned and unexplained order, the Supreme Court cleared the way for President Trump to significantly restructure and radically downsize the Department of Education. Linda McMahon, Secretary of Education v. New York.

According to Steve Vladeck, law professor at Georgetown and author of the book Shadow Docket, this is the seventh, different, completely unexplained grant of emergency relief to the Trump administration in just the last ten weeks. It is yet another one that will have massive real-world effects long before the justices ever confront whether what the government is doing is actually lawful.

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During his campaign for a second term in office, Donald Trump repeatedly promised to “close up the Department of Education … early in the administration.” Following his election, he asserted that “you can do a lot of things without Congress … including a virtual closure of the Department of Education,” describing the Department’s work as a “big con job.” 

Later, when nominating Linda McMahon to head the Department, President Trump said that he had directed her “to put herself out of a job.” Consistent with that directive, on her first day as the new Secretary of the Department, McMahon issued a memorandum explaining that she would lead the Department’s “final mission” and fulfill the President’s “campaign promises.”

About one week later, on March 11, McMahon announced a “reduction in force” that would eliminate nearly 50% of the Department’s workforce, slashing the number of employees from 4,133 to 2,183.

Those terminations would, in effect, do away with whole offices and teams within the Department. For example, the directive terminated:

• The entire Office of English Language Acquisition, which Congress tasked with administering the Department’s “bilingual education programs”
• All employees within the Office of the General Counsel that specialize in K–12 education funding
• Seven of 12 regional divisions of the Office of Civil Rights
• Most of the Federal Student Aid office responsible for certifying schools so that their students can receive federal financial aid
• The entire unit of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services charged with providing technical assistance and guidance on complying with the Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)

McMahon subsequently characterized these staff reductions as only “the first step on the road to a total shutdown” of the Department.

Following McMahon’s March 11 announcement and the mass termination of Department employees, a group of 20 States, the District of Columbia, several school districts, and unions sued the Department in the federal district court for the district of Massachusetts.

They argued that these reductions in force would “effectively dismantle” the Department and “incapacitate” components of the Department responsible for performing functions mandated by Congress. The plaintiffs assert that this unilateral executive action violates the Constitution’s separation of powers, among other violations of law. 

Following the initiation of the litigation, the plaintiffs urged the district court to enter an injunction against implementation of the administration’s plans, including reinstatement of the terminated employees, while the underlying legal issues remain to be litigated.

In support, dozens of affidavits from Department officials and federal funding recipients described the mass termination’s effects on schools and students across the Nation.

School districts, one such affidavit averred, depend on timely disbursement of federal funds to pay teachers and to purchase materials and equipment throughout the academic year. Even short-term delays in funding can force school districts “to make cuts … to staff and programs, disrupting services for students and families.”

Scores of officials who worked at the Department also attested that the agency would no longer be able to carry out many of its Congressionally mandated duties following the mass termination.

The administration, for its part, submitted no evidence to rebut the factual record compiled by the plaintiffs. Nor did it argue that the Executive could singlehandedly abolish the Department. Instead, it simply asserted that the mass terminations fell within the President’s authority because it was only part of an effort to “streamline” the Department.

District Court Judge Myong J. Joun granted the requested preliminary injunction request. The court found that “the record abundantly reveals that the administration’s true intention is to effectively dismantle the Department without an authorizing statute,” and that the proposed terminations would prevent the Department from “carrying out its statutory functions.”

That unilateral executive action, the District Court concluded, likely violated the separation of powers by being beyond the president’s powers without the consent of Congress.

Judge Joun also concluded that a preliminary injunction would serve the public interest “because there is a substantial risk that, without it, there will be significant harm to the functioning of public and higher education, particular in plaintiff States. It is well established that an educated citizenry provides the foundation for our democracy.”

The administration subsequently appealed the entry of the injunction to the First Circuit Court of Appeals which left the injunction in place. In an opinion by Chief Judge David Barron, the three-judge appellate panel determined that “we see no basis on which to conclude that the District Court erred in finding that the RIF made it effectively impossible for the Department to carry out its statutory obligations.” 

In doing so, the First Circuit faulted the administration for not even contesting the intent behind the proposed reduction in force or “the disabling impact of those actions on the Department’s ability to carry out statutorily assigned functions.”

The administration then filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court seeking to have the preliminary injunction overturned, the 18th such emergency appeal since the administration arrived in office on January 20.

As indicated above, on July 14, the Court granted the motion, allowing the administration to proceed with its plan during however long it takes for the judicial system to ultimately determine the legality of doing so. The Court’s three-sentence order exhibits no indication of the reason(s) behind the majority’s conclusion.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a scathing 19-page dissenting opinion, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. The opinion begins by asserting that Congress had mandated that the Department of Education play a vital role in this Nation’s education system, safeguarding equal access to learning and channeling billions of dollars to schools and students across the country each year. 

Federal involvement in education was not a modern phenomenon as, for over 150 years, the Federal Government has played a critical role in supplementing and supporting the education provided by States, localities, and private institutions.

However, in 1979, Congress enacted the Department of Education Organization Act to “strengthen the Federal commitment to ensuring access to equal educational opportunity for every individual.” In service of that goal, the Act integrated the Federal Government’s educational programs into a new Cabinet-level agency called the Department of Education.

Congress tasked the new agency with administering a broad range of educational programs. For example, the Department runs the federal student financial-aid system, federal grants for higher education institutions, federal work-study program, and federal funding for kindergarten through 12th grade.

The scale of these efforts is vast:

• In June 2025, the Department reported awarding over $120 billion a year in federal student aid to over 13 million students.
• In 2020–2021, the Federal Government distributed over $100 billion in funding directly to public schools, representing around 11% of all funding for public elementary and secondary schools across the country.
• Tens of millions of low-income families rely on financial assistance programs administered by the Department.
• Schools and students in every State rely on federal programs established by Congress and run by the Department.

Congress has prohibited the Secretary of Education from “abolishing organizational entities established” in the Department’s basic statute. As for statutory entities later transferred to the Department by Congress, the Secretary may only “consolidate, alter, or discontinue” the entities specifically affected, after providing Congress with 90 days’ advance notice and a “statement of the action proposed … and the facts and circumstances relied upon in support of such proposed action.”

The dissenting Justices acknowledged that past presidential administrations have taken different positions on the Department’s value and its proper role in the Nation’s system of education over the years. Presidents Carter and Clinton, for instance, made investing in it a priority. President Reagan, by contrast, submitted a proposal to Congress that would have abolished the Department, though he ultimately withdrew the proposal after it garnered little support in Congress. Until now, however, Presidents have recognized they lack the unilateral authority to eradicate a department that Congress has tasked with fulfilling statutory duties.

Undeterred by any limits on executive authority, President Trump has made clear that he intends to close the Department without Congress’s involvement.

The dissenters assert that in our constitutional order, Congress “makes laws” and the President “faithfully executes them.” Quoting Justice Robert Jackson in the Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co (1952) case, “the Founders of this Nation entrusted the lawmaking power to the Congress alone,” and “there is no provision in the Constitution that authorizes the President to enact, to amend, or to repeal statutes.”

The President thus lacks unilateral authority to close a Cabinet-level agency. In short, as the dissenters see it, “Congress created the Department, and only Congress can abolish it.”

Justice Sotomayor contends that “when the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it.”

Rather than maintain the status quo pending resolution of the underlying legal issues, this Court now intervenes, lifting the injunction and permitting the administration to proceed with dismantling the Department. Sotomayor concludes that decision is “indefensible.” “The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naive, but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave.”

Rather than contest these principles, the administration in the lower courts contended that the mass terminations were not part of any planned closure, but instead were simply intended to “cut bureaucratic bloat.”

According to Justice Sotomayor, the record in the case “unambiguously” refutes that account. Neither the President nor Secretary McMahon, she contends, made any secret of their intent to ignore their constitutional duties. “That the majority of this Court sees fit to repay that obfuscation with emergency equitable relief is troubling.”

Justice Sotomayor also contends that the relative harms to the parties are “vastly disproportionate.” While the administration will, no doubt, suffer pocketbook harms from having to pay employees that it sought to fire as the litigation proceeds, the harm to this Nation’s education system and individual students is of a far greater magnitude. 

Lifting the District Court’s injunction in her opinion will unleash untold harm, delaying or denying educational opportunities without the federal resources Congress intended. “The majority apparently deems it more important to free the Government from paying employees it had no right to fire than to avert these very real harms while the litigation continues. Equity does not support such an inequitable result.”

John Christie was for many years a senior partner in a large Washington, D.C. law firm. He specialized in anti-trust litigation and developed a keen interest in the U.S. Supreme Court about which he lectures and writes.