On Thursday, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking President Donald Trump’s executive order to dismantle the Department of Education (DOE) and ordered the agency to reinstate employees who were let go in the mass layoffs last March.

The honorable Judge Myong Juon, a U.S. district Judge in Boston, presided over two cases alleging that the Trump administration’s plan amounted to an illegal closure of an essential government agency.

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The first case was brought against the administration by the school districts of Somerville and Easthampton in Massachusetts, in addition to the American Federation of Teachers and other miscellaneous educational organizations. The plaintiffs are represented by the nonpartisan legal organization Democracy Forward.

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The second suit was filed by a coalition of Democratic attorneys general from 21 states.

Both suits argue that the mass layoffs within DOE have left the department unable to carry out responsibilities required by Congress, including support to special education, distributing financial aid, and enforcing civil rights laws.

In the judge’s order issuing the injunction, he stated that the plaintiffs illustrated a “stark picture of the irreparable harm that will result from financial uncertainty and delay, impeded access to vital knowledge on which students and educators rely, and loss of essential services for America’s most vulnerable student populations.” 

Layoffs of that scale, he added, “will likely cripple the department. The idea that Defendants’ actions are merely a ‘reorganization’ is plainly not true.”

Hours after the injunction was granted, the Trump administration filed an appeal, accusing Juon of being a “far-left judge” who 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,” according to a press statement by spokesperson Madi Biedermann obtained by the Associated Press

Joun had also ordered that DOE reinstate federal workers who were terminated on March 11. It’s estimated that the mass firing resulted in 1,300 workers losing their jobs, reducing the staff from the initial 4,100 workers from when Trump took office.

“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.

Despite the Trump administration’s plans to abolish DOE, the administration, along with Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, has used the organization to attack public education programs for allowing policies to be more inclusive toward transgender people. The DOE went so far as to create a joint task force with the Department of Justice for the sole purpose of prosecuting schools under Title IX for allowing transgender students to compete on sports teams matching their gender identity. 

It is not fully confirmed to what extent the Trump administration plans on dismantling DOE, as it can be safely assumed that the current administration has no qualms with weaponizing DOE against transgender youth and teachers.

For now, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, called the recent court decision “a first step to reverse this war on knowledge and the undermining of broad-based opportunity.”

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