The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday granted the Trump administration’s emergency request to immediately terminate more than 100 grants under two federal teacher-training programs.
The court ruled 5-4 to undo a temporary restraining order issued by a federal district judge in Massachusetts last month that restored funding for 104 grants under the Teacher Quality Partnership and Supporting Effective Educator Development programs.
The federal government “is likely to succeed” in showing that the lower court lacked jurisdiction to order the grants to continue under a challenge brought based on the Administrative Procedure Act, the majority said in an unsigned opinion in Department of Education v. California.
Further, the majority said, the challengers—eight Democratic-led states—“have not refuted the government’s representation that it is unlikely to recover the grant funds once they are disbursed.”
The decision allows the district judge to continue a more thorough review of the merits of the challenge, with the case potentially returning to the high court.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. would deny the administration’s request, but he didn’t join either of two dissents.
Justice Elena Kagan, in a solo dissent, said it was a “mistake” for the court to act at this stage.
“In my view, nothing about this case demanded our immediate intervention,” Kagan said. “Rather than make new law on our emergency docket, we should have allowed the dispute to proceed in the ordinary way.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in a separate dissent joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, also criticized the majority for acting while the district judge was weighing the merits of granting a preliminary injunction, and she called the Supreme Court majority’s action “unprincipled and unfortunate.”
“Reinstating the challenged grant-termination policy will inflict significant harm on grantees—a fact that the government barely contests,” Jackson said.
Some $65 million in outstanding funds tied to two programs
The U.S. Education Department abruptly canceled the grants in early February, contending that they promoted diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives or otherwise unlawfully discriminated on the basis of race, sex, or other protected characteristics.
The grants “conflict with the department’s policy of prioritizing merit, fairness, and excellence in education,” the department said in boilerplate letters to recipients, and no longer support the department priorities.
The department ended all but five grants under the TQP and SEED programs. The action was challenged by eight Democratic-led states, and on March 10, U.S. District Judge Myong J. Joun of Boston issued a temporary restraining order requiring that some $65 million in outstanding funds be restored to the program recipients in the eight states—California, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Wisconsin.
The TRO was set to expire by April 7 as Joun weighed a preliminary injunction, which the judge held a hearing about on March 28. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit, also in Boston, declined the Trump administration’s request to delay the TRO, leading the administration to file its emergency request to the Supreme Court.
The Education Department, in its emergency application, largely addressed administrative law issues arising across multiple court challenges to Trump administration actions.
“This case exemplifies a flood of recent suits that raise the question: ‘Does a single district-court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever)’ millions in taxpayer dollars?” said the administration’s filing, quoting a recent dissent by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., joined by three other justices, when the court refused to undo a TRO requiring the restoration of some $2 billion in U.S. Agency for International Development grants.
Federal district courts are engaged in an “unconstitutional reign as self-appointed managers of executive branch funding and grant-disbursement decisions,” Acting U.S. Solicitor General Sarah M. Harris said in the emergency application. “Only this court can right the ship—and the time to do so is now.”
Harris said the grant recipients were likely to make “unnecessarily large drawdowns” of the $65 million in outstanding grant funding under the TRO.
The states, in a filing led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, told the court that the TRO was meant to preserve the status quo and that the Trump administration was unlikely to prevail in fighting the preliminary injunction.
“Because the district court acted responsibly—entering a narrow and time-limited restraining order to preserve the status quo while moving rapidly” to decide the preliminary-injunction motion, the administration’s application will likely be moot by early this month, the states argued.
Differing views on whether grant funds are at risk of being recoverable or not
Jackson, in her 17-page dissent, went into some detail about the two grant programs and the Trump administration’s decision to terminate them.
She observed that the TQP and SEED grant programs are authorized by statute and have been implemented by the department since 2008 and 2015, respectively.
“What is new here is the department’s insistence that it need not go through the notice and review procedures the agency has traditionally used to terminate grants it has awarded,” Jackson said. “Importantly, there is no evidence that grantees have rushed to draw down the remaining $65 million in grant funds since the District Court entered the TRO 25 days ago. If the past is the best predictor of the future, then there is no factual basis for concluding that any terminated-recipient grant runs are likely to occur in the three days remaining in the TRO.”
The majority, however, in its four-paragraph opinion, said no grant recipient has “promised to return withdrawn funds should its grant termination be reinstated,” and the government “compellingly argues” that the challengers would not suffer any irreparable harm while the TRO is set aside.
Although some grant recipients have indicated they are being squeezed by potential loss of funds, the high court said the states challenging the terminations “have represented in this litigation that they have the financial wherewithal to keep their programs running. So, if respondents ultimately prevail, they can recover any wrongfully withheld funds through suit in an appropriate forum.”
