A federal judge on Thursday temporarily reinstated hundreds of Education Department workers laid off by the Trump administration and blocked the president's executive order attempting to dismantle the decades-old agency.
District Court Judge Myong J. Joun, a Biden appointee in Boston, said the White House's decision to fire more than 1,300 workers in March has prevented the federal government from effectively implementing legally required programs and services.
At the request of a coalition of states, he granted a preliminary injunction to rehire the staffers while a lawsuit plays out over whether the employees were illegally fired.
States and school districts are experiencing "delays and uncertainty in their receipt of federal educational funding, amounting in the millions, which jeopardize their missions of ensuring an educated citizenry and providing quality education," the judge wrote in the order. "Such delays and uncertainty raise immediate predicaments about whether there will be sufficient staff and student programming for the 2025-2026 school year and hinder long term planning."