By Molly Claire Goddard
5:12am PDT, May 24, 2025
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One legal authority is shutting down
Donald Trump's plan to dismantle the Department of Education.
On Thursday, May 22, Boston U.S. District Judge
Myong Joun of Massachusetts ordered that the president and his administration must rehire the workers laid off after Trump signed an executive order to gut the government entity to reduce costs.
Keep reading to learn why Joun shut down the Republican leader…MORE:
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In Judge Myong Joun's opinion, he made it clear that Donald Trump's effort
eliminate the Department of Education was unlawful without the consent of Congress.
"It is only reasonable to expect that an RIF [reduction in force] of this magnitude will likely cripple the Department. The idea that Defendants' actions are merely a 'reorganization' is plainly not true," the legal document reads.
"Defendants do acknowledge, as they must, that the Department cannot be shut down without Congress's approval, yet they simultaneously claim that their legislative goals are distinct from their administrative goals (improving efficiency)," Joun explains. "There is nothing in the record to support these contradictory positions."
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In response to Judge Myong Joun's ruling, the Department of Education claimed Donald Trump and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon were justified in firing the federal employees.
"President Trump and the Senate-confirmed Secretary of Education clearly have the authority to make decisions about agency reorganization efforts, not an unelected Judge with a political axe to grind," spokeswoman for the government entity Madi Biedermann claimed in a statement. "This ruling is not in the best interest of American students or families. We will immediately challenge this on an emergency basis."
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Earlier this year, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and Donald Trump allegedly dismissed 1,300 employees to wind down and eventually end the Department of Education.
"That was the president's mandate," she confirmed during a March interview with Fox News host
Laura Ingraham about the commander-in-chief's executive order. "His directive to me clearly is to
shut down the Department of Education. What we did today was to take the first step of eliminating what I think is bureaucratic bloat."
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After Donald Trump signed off on the action, Democrats publicly spoke out against the end of the government program.
"The Department of Education (ED) appears to be abandoning the millions of parents, students and borrowers who rely on a functioning federal student aid system to lower education cost," Senator Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts wrote in a letter opposing the move.
