Federal officials are accusing Duke University’s law journal and medical school of racial discrimination.
Duke University file photo
The Departments of Education and Health and Human Services are investigating Duke University and the Duke Law Journal for allegedly violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination based on race and national origin, the agencies announced Monday.
The New York Timesreported Tuesday night that the Trump administration froze $108 million in federal grants and contracts at Duke’s medical school and health system.
On Monday, ED and HHS sent a letter detailing their concerns about potentially discriminatory practices at Duke Health and threatening the medical school’s federal funding.
“These practices allegedly include illegal and wrongful racial preferences and discriminatory activity in recruitment, student admissions, scholarships and financial aid, mentoring and enrichment programs, hiring, promotion, and more,” the letter states, though officials didn’t offer specifics.
The departments want Duke to “review all policies and practices at Duke Health for the illegal use of race preferences, take immediate action to reform all of those that unlawfully take account of race or ethnicity to bestow benefits or advantages, and provide clear and verifiable assurances to the government that Duke’s new policies will be implemented faithfully going forward—including by making all necessary organizational, leadership, and personnel changes to ensure the necessary reforms will be durable.”
Additionally, the agencies want Duke to convene a “Merit and Civil Rights Committee” that can negotiate with the federal government on behalf of university leaders and “avoid invasive federal engagement,” according to the letter. This request appears to be a new ask for the Trump administration as officials work to expand their scrutiny of higher education, based on what’s publicly known about investigations at other colleges.
“We hope this arrangement will enable the parties to move quickly toward a mutually agreeable resolution of outstanding concerns and complaints,” officials wrote in the letter. “If the alleged offending policies, practices, and programs are found to exist and remain unrectified after six months, or if at any time the Merit and Civil Rights Committee and federal government reach an impasse, the federal government will commence enforcement proceedings as appropriate.”
Duke has 10 days to respond to the request to form the committee.
Meanwhile, the Duke Law Journal investigation, led by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, centers on allegations that the journal uses factors such as race or national origin to select editors. The department opened a similar investigation into the Harvard Law Review.
The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news outlet, reported last month that the Duke Law Journal prepared a special application packet for affinity groups that noted applicants could get a three- to five-point bump if they have “meaningfully advanced the interests of communities with diverse perspectives and experiences either at school or in their community.”
Brown University is taking out a $500 million loan as it faces a prolonged federal funding freeze and braces for other changes to federal policy, Bloomberg reported.
The university previously borrowed $300 million in April after the Trump administration said it was freezing about $510 million in federal grants and contracts at the Ivy League institution.
“Given recent volatility in capital markets and uncertainty related to evolving federal policy related to higher education, research and other important priorities of Brown, the university is fortunate to have a number of sources of liquidity,” a Brown spokesperson told Bloomberg.
Other universities have turned to loans or bonds to get immediate cash amid federal funding freezes.
In a June message that warned of the potential for “significant cost-cutting” measures, Brown administrators pointed to numerous challenges such as federal research grant cuts, the increasing tax on university endowments and threats to international students. Administrators were considering, among other measures, service reductions as well as changes to staffing levels and graduate student admissions. Brown was already grappling with a $46 million deficit before President Trump took office in January, and the university implemented a hiring freeze in March.
“All these losses represent an ongoing threat to Brown’s financial sustainability and, consequently, our ability to fulfill our mission,” university officials wrote of the federal policy changes. “We are doing everything possible to minimize the impact, and we are proud of the response of this community in making important changes to operations to reduce expenses over the past year. Unfortunately, the level of savings to date is not enough to counter the deep financial losses Brown is experiencing and must prepare for in the coming year.”
College leaders are breathing a tentative sigh of relief after the Trump administration promised Friday to release roughly $5 billion in withheld education funding, slated for a range of K–12 programs but also $716 million for adult education programs. Not included in Friday’s announcement, however, was $52 million allocated for migrant higher education programs.
On June 30, the Department of Education paused nearly $7 billion in education funding expected on July 1, as part of a review by the Office of Management and Budget. Over the weeks of uncertainty that followed, community college leaders feared that, without the funds, they’d need to strip back adult education programming, like GED programs, and lay off personnel. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle called for the funds’ release. A group of 10 Republican senators demanded an end to the freeze in a July 16 letter to OMB. Democratic governors from 18 states also wrote to Education Secretary Linda McMahon with the same plea.
Rachel Gasseling, adult education director at Western Nebraska Community College, said that she was heartbroken when the Education Department paused the adult education funds. Her program serves the rural Nebraska panhandle and had a record 27 graduates this past academic year, an almost 69 percent increase over the year before. Adult ed programs served more than 9,300 students statewide last year, she said.
“By all measures, we were going above and beyond to help our communities and help people build better lives,” Gasseling wrote to Inside Higher Ed. “Every day we waited to know whether we had to start looking for a new job or hold out one more day in hopes we can keep doing what we love.”
Now she knows her work can continue. Her college was able to float the program until the funds returned. But for some programs across the country, the damage is already done, she said. They closed or reduced staff or services when the funds didn’t come through.
“A great deal of people have been affected by this decision, and I hope that programs are able to rebuild or stay afloat for the sake of neighbors and communities,” she said.
David Baime, senior vice president for government relations at the American Association of Community Colleges, said nationwide, state and campus leaders are “extremely relieved” by the news of the restored adult education funds. Now community college leaders hope these programs receive continued support in the 2026 fiscal year appropriations process.
“The loss of these funds would have been devastating to hundreds of community colleges, and some programs were already scaled back given the hiatus in support,” he wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed. “Community colleges are deeply thankful that key legislators stood up for this essential function.”
Heather Morgan, executive director of the Kansas Association of Community Colleges, said she’s glad to see the funds released but remains wary about the future of adult education programs under the Trump administration. Trump proposed axing these programs in his budget proposal for fiscal year 2026.
“While this funding helps the programs continue, we will continue to watch the upcoming appropriations process as adult basic education is one of the areas proposed in the president’s budget for elimination,” Morgan wrote to Inside Higher Ed. “The uncertainty of funding makes keeping positions filled difficult as we work to serve adult learners.” The budget proposal would also eliminate funding for migrant education.
The Education Department and the Office of Management and Budget did not respond to requests for comment.
Migrant Programs In Flux
Funds for other postsecondary programs still hang in the balance. Even as the Education Department released funding to states for migrant education at the K–12 level, money for two postsecondary migrant programs remains frozen: the High School Equivalency Program, a program that supports migrant farmworkers and their families in earning their GEDs, and the College Assistance for Migrants Program, which helps recruit and support those students through their first year of college.
Greg Contreras, the director of the National HEP/CAMP Association, told Inside Higher Ed that the release of funds for the K–12 Migrant Education Program was “definitely encouraging.” But he said he has still received no word on if and when the review of HEP and CAMP may come to an end.
Without the money to support HEP and CAMP, colleges and universities have been forced to shutter their programs and lay off employees who work with migrant students.
“As each week rolls by, more programs are starting to drop off,” Contreras said. He received a layoff notice for his own position leading the CAMP initiative at Portland Community College in Oregon; originally, he was told his last day would be in August, but he is working with administrators to see if he might be able to stay through the start of PCC’s fall semester in September.
Along with funding resources for migrant students, money for CAMP also goes toward scholarships and stipends. Michael Heim, the director of HEP and CAMP at Washington State University, said that his program’s incoming students are grappling with whether they will be able to enroll if the money doesn’t come through. Potentially losing out on scholarships they were promised will be a major factor in their decision-making, he said. But they’re also concerned about their academic success without access to the specialized resources CAMP typically offers, such as tutoring and mentorship.
“The question they ask themselves is, ‘How do I find community, how do I know people will be in my corner to support me?’” he said. “I think it speaks to a mentality within our students, over all, that they know they want to go to college, but they want to be successful, because the values their families are instilling them are: They know education is important, and they don’t want to miss this opportunity to make their parents proud, make their siblings proud.”
The National HEP/CAMP Association and its members aren’t backing down yet. The board recently traveled to Washington, D.C., where Contreras said they met with over 30 congressional staff members who they hope will pass along their messages about the importance and effectiveness of the programs.
Even HEP and CAMP staff who have lost their jobs are staying involved in the effort to get their funding restored, he said, contacting their own congresspeople to ask them to push for the funds to be released.
A freeze on federal education funding that prompted two lawsuits has been lifted, and states will be able to access the money next week, the U.S. Department of Education announced Friday.
The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which argued that districts were spending the money to advance a “radical left-wing agenda,” has completed its review of five different programs totaling $5.5 billion, said Madison Beidermann, spokeswoman for the department.
The funds support education for English learners and migrant students and pay for staff training and extra instructional positions. The news came a week after the administration released over $1.3 billion for summer and afterschool programs, which was also held up for review.
The department alerted states June 30, one day before they expected to receive the money, that the review was in process, forcing programs to cut staff and end summer programs early. Congress appropriated the funds for this coming school year, and President Donald Trump signed the budget in March.
The release of the funds, announced just hours before Education Secretary Linda McMahon was scheduled to meet with the nation’s governors in Colorado Springs, Colorado, comes as superintendents nationwide were preparing to eliminate services like literacy and math coaches, according to a survey conducted by AASA, the School Superintendents Association. Half of the 628 chiefs who responded from 43 states said they would have to lay off staff who work with special education students if the funds weren’t released. American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten brought the message to attendees at the union’s annual TEACH conference in Washington, D.C.
“The administration backed down and we are getting the money,” she said to a cheering audience. “Those of you who lobbied yesterday, thank you. Those of you who brought the lawsuit, thank you.”
Attorney generals from 24 blue states and the District of Columbia sued on July 14 over the freeze, arguing that the administration’s actions were harming schools. School districts, parents, unions and nonprofits filed a second challenge on July 21, saying that OMB has never stood in the way of the department’s practice of releasing the funds in two steps, first on July 1 and the rest on Oct. 1. Republican senators joined their Democratic colleagues in pressuring the administration to free up the money.
Friday’s announcement doesn’t mean the legal fight is over. In a statement, Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, which is handling the second case, said the legal team would “continue to monitor the situation and work in court to ensure the administration fully complies with the law and that these resources reach the schools and students who need them most.”
Districts can now start the school year without the shortfall, but that doesn’t mean advocates’ worries are over about future disruptions to funding. The July 1 distribution date is a longstanding practice, not something written into the law.
Tara Thomas, government affairs manager for AASA, said her organization wants to “have additional conversations” with Congress or the administration to “ensure that this type of uncertainty at the last minute doesn’t happen again. Districts need to continue to rely on stable, timely, reliable federal funding.”
Another fight over education funds could also be ahead. The White House is reportedly preparing another recissions package that would target education funding. Thomas said she didn’t know what might be included, but it could be cuts that the Department of Government Efficiency made to grant programs.
On Friday, Trump signed a recissions package, pulling back $9 billion in funds from public television and foreign aid.
Communities across the nation began the budget process for the 2025-2026 school year after Congress passed the FY25 Continuing Resolution on March 14, 2025. Historically, states receive these funds on July 1, enabling them to allocate resources to local districts at the start of the fiscal year.
Even though these funds were approved by Congress, the Administration froze the distribution on June 30. Since that time, AASA, The School Superintendents Association, has advocated for their release, including organizing hundreds of superintendents to meet with offices on the Hill to share information about its impact, the week of July 7.
To gather more information about the real-world effects on students across America, AASA conducted a survey with its members.
From July 11th to July 18th, AASA received responses from 628 superintendents in 43 states.
Eighty-five percent of respondents said they have existing contracts paid with federal funds that are currently being withheld, and now have to cover those costs with local dollars.
Respondents shared what will be cut to cover this forced cost shift:
Nearly three out of four respondents said they will have to eliminate academic services for students. The programs include targeted literacy and math coaches, before and after school programming, tutoring, credit recovery, CTE and dual enrollment opportunities.
Half of respondents reported they will have to lay off teachers and personnel. These personnel include those who work specifically with English-language learners and special education students, as well as staff who provide targeted reading and math interventions to struggling students.
Half of respondents said they will have to reduce afterschool and extracurricular offerings for students. These programs provide STEM/STEAM opportunities, performing arts and music programs, and AP coursework.
Four out of five respondents indicated they will be forced to reduce or eliminate professional development offerings for educators. These funds are used to build teachers’ expertise such as training in the science of reading, teaching math, and the use of AI in the classroom. They are also used to ensure new teachers have the mentors and coaching they need to be successful.
As federal funding is still being withheld, 23 percent of respondents have been forced to make tough choices about how to reallocate funding, and many districts are rapidly approaching similar inflection points.
Notably, 29 percent of districts indicated that they must have access to these funds by August 1 to avoid cutting critical programs and services for students. Twenty-one percent of districts will have to notify parents and educators about the loss of programs and services by August 15.
Without timely disbursement of funding, the risk of disruption to essential educational supports for children grows significantly.
As one superintendent who completed the survey said, “This isn’t a future problem; it’s happening now. Our budget was set with these funds in mind. Their sudden withholding has thrown us into chaos, forcing drastic measures that will negatively impact every student, classroom, and school in our district. We urgently need these funds released to prevent irreparable harm to our educational programs and ensure our students get the quality education they deserve.”
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The U.S. Department of Education’s withholding of $6.2 billion in federal K-12 grants has local and state school systems scrambling to figure out how to make up for the budget shortages. It has also caused a swell of advocacy from families, lawmakers, educators and others across the nation.
The withheld funds for fiscal year 2025 were expected to be released by the Education Department July 1. Programs at risk due to the funding hold include English learner services, academic supports, after-school programming and professional development.
The frozen funds represent at least 10% or more of states’ overall K-12 federal revenues if the money is not distributed, according to the nonpartisan Learning Policy Institute.
At the local level, superintendents and principals are voicing concern about how the funding freeze will impact their school services, particularly those that serve English learners, homeless students and students from low-income families.
Chase Christensen, principal and superintendent of the 80-student Sheridan County School District #3 in rural Clearmont, Wyoming, said his district was expecting $30,000 in Title II and IV funding that is being withheld.
The district had nearly finalized its roughly $4 million budget for the upcoming school year when it learned of the federal funding freeze. It then adjusted the budget to remove those federal funds and is making up the difference by leaving a staffing position vacant.
Although the budget adjustment means student services under those title programs can continue, Christensen said “every dollar of federal funding for education is impactful” at the individual student level.
“When these funds are pulled, especially this late in the game for budget planning and everything else, students are going to be the ones that lose out,” Christensen said.
Nationally, bigger districts have the largest funding gaps, according to a New America analysis of data from 46 states that had available funding figures. Those districts include Los Angeles Unified School District ($82 million), Florida’s Dade County School District ($38 million), and Nevada’s Clark County School District ($22 million).
Advocacy groups and policymakers are calling on the Trump administration to restore the funds. The Boys and Girls Clubs of America, a nonprofit that supports afterschool programs, said the impact of the blocked funds will be “swift and devastating,” in a statement from President and CEO Jim Clark.
Clark said 926 Boys and Girls Clubs across the country could close, and 5,900 jobs would be lost if the funding is not released. “Afterschool and summer learning programs are cornerstones of academic success, public safety, and family stability for millions of young people — but right now, we stand at a dangerous tipping point,” Clark said.
The National English Learner Roundtable, a coalition of more than a dozen national and state-based organizations supportive of English learner services, said in a Thursday statement, “This unprecedented move by the Department has blindsided schools that have always been able to rely on these funds to support the start of the school year, and has created budgetary chaos for nearly every K-12 school district.”
On Thursday, 150 Democratic House lawmakers sent a letter to U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon and White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought demanding the title funds be released.
“This late-breaking decision, which provided no timeline for which states can expect a final decision, is leaving states financially vulnerable and forcing many to make last minute decisions about how to proceed with K12 education in this upcoming school year,” the letter said.
The funding hold has already led to staff layoffs, program delays and cancellations of services, the House members said.
Spending under review
The withheld funds were appropriated by Congress and approved by President Donald Trump earlier this year. States expected to gain access to the monies starting July 1, as routine. But the day before, on June 30, the Education Department told grantees not to expect the funds while it conducts a review and referred questions to OMB.
The specific grant funding being withheld includes:
Title II-A for professional development: $2.2 billion.
Title IV-A for student support and academic enrichment: $1.4 billion.
Title IV-B for 21st Century Community Learning Centers: $1.3 billion.
Title III-A for English-learner services: $890 million.
Title I-C for migrant education: $375 million.
On Thursday, in a statement to K-12 Dive, OMB said no funding decisions have been made and that it is conducting a “programmatic review of education funding.”
The office also said, “initial findings show that many of these grant programs have been grossly misused to subsidize a radical leftwing agenda.”
OMB and the Education Department have not indicated a timeframe for the review of the frozen federal funds.
The Trump administration has said it is scrutinizing spending across all federal agencies to ensure there is no waste, fraud or abuse of taxpayer dollars. Republican leaders have said they want to reduce the scope of the federal government to give states and districts more financial decision-making.
Additionally, since Trump’s inauguration in January, the Education Department has sought to lay off about half its staff, temporarily withheld federal COVID-19 emergency funding, scaled back education research, and promised to shut down the agency.
Supplement, not supplant concerns
All the turmoil is taking a toll on school and district education leaders, said the Center on Reinventing Public Education in a recent post. To support districts, CRPE recommends that state education agencies provide clarity about funding rules and help districts craft innovative solutions for budget shortages.
Finding funding efficiencies such as potential district consolidations may also need to be considered, CRPE said.
Christensen, the Wyoming principal and superintendent, said clarification and guidance from his superintendent networks and the National Association of Secondary School Principals has been helpful to him during this moment of funding uncertainty. Christensen was named Wyoming’s 2025 Secondary Principal of the Year by the Wyoming Association of Secondary School Principals earlier this year.
AASA, The School Superintendents Association, meanwhile, is telling its members that the “supplement, not supplant” rule for federal funding — the practice of using federal funds to replace state or local funds — should not be a concern at this time.
AASA points to a 2013 Education Department letter that said if a district needs to to use local dollars to make up for a funding shortfall in federal money, but then later receives the federal funding, this scenario would not trigger a “supplement, not supplant” concern because the local dollars were being loaned or fronted to fill that federal funding gap.
The 2013 letter also recommends districts document if they use local funds to fill in federal funding shortages.
Northwestern University is stepping in to fund ongoing research projects after the private institution received stop-work orders on nearly 100 federal grants, CBS News Chicago reported.
Northwestern, like others on the list, had a pro-Palestinian encampment protest on campus last spring, which prompted Congress to bring its president in for a hearing on antisemitism in May.
Northwestern president Michael Schill and Board of Trustees chair Peter Barris told the university community in an email obtained by CBS News Chicago that the university still had not received formal notice that federal research funding had been pulled, but the university has received stop-work orders. They noted the university will continue funding on projects that received stop-work orders as well as other research threatened by the Trump administration.
“The work we do is essential to our community, to the nation and to the world. Enabling this vital research to continue is among our most important priorities, and supporting our researchers in this moment is a responsibility we take seriously,” Schill and Barris wrote in the Thursday email.
Northwestern is among the nation’s wealthiest universities, with an endowment recently valued at $14.2 billion. However, financial experts have cautioned against leveraging endowments to plug budget holes, prompting some wealthy institutions targeted by the administration to issue bonds or take out private loans.
The Trump administration is freezing more than $1 billion in federal funds at Cornell University and $790 million at Northwestern University—the latest colleges to see their federal grants and contracts threatened, The New York Timesreported Tuesday, citing anonymous officials.
The affected funds will include money from the Agriculture, Defense, Education and Health and Human Services Departments. The Times didn’t say why those universities were losing the money aside from noting that both institutions are facing civil rights investigations related to alleged antisemitism on campus. In recent weeks, Northwestern has sought to highlight its efforts to combat antisemitism, which include policy changes and mandatory antisemitism training for students, faculty and staff.
However, the administration can’t legally pull funding from colleges for civil rights violations until after a lengthy process that’s supposed to include notice to Congress and the opportunity for judicial review. Still, the Trump administration has used other avenues—which some experts say are illegal and are the subject of legal challenges—to cut off money. They include tapping a task force to investigate colleges and targeting their grants and contracts. The task force is currently reviewing Harvard University’s federal funding, which totals $9 billion, and has demanded several changes in order for the college to continue receiving money.
“This was wrong last week, it is wrong this week, and it will be wrong next week,” said Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education.
Jon Yates, a Northwestern spokesman, said the university learned via the media about the freeze, which would affect “a significant portion of our federal funding.”
“The University has not received any official notification from the federal government,” Yates wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed. “Federal funds that Northwestern receives drive innovative and life-saving research, like the recent development by Northwestern researchers of the world’s smallest pacemaker, and research fueling the fight against Alzheimer’s disease. This type of research is now at jeopardy. The University has fully cooperated with investigations by both the Department of Education and Congress.”
Cornell didn’t respond to an Inside Higher Ed request for comment.
The American Jewish Committee on Tuesday warned the Trump administration against making dramatic cuts to universities’ funding, adding that such a step should be a last resort.
In a 5-4 split, the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday granted the Trump administration’s emergency request to maintain a freeze on millions of dollars in federal teacher training grants.
The administration’s emergency application, filed on March 26, asked the justices to vacate a district court judge’s order requiring the U.S. Department of Education to reinstate some of Trump’s $600 million in slashed funding. The justices granted Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris’ call for an immediate administrative stay, which pauses the March 10 order by Judge Myong Joun of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts while the case continues.
In an unsigned opinion, the Supreme Court majority wrote that the recipient programs wouldn’t suffer permanent damages if the funds were withheld while the case moves through the lower courts. The “respondents have not refuted the Government’s representation that it is unlikely to recover the grant funds once they are disbursed,” the opinion said.
The opinion also suggested the lower court may not have had the authority to issue its order.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, wrote that the notion that some grant recipients may seek to draw down funds that the Trump administration seeks to terminate was the “only hint of urgency that the Government offers to justify its unusual request for our intervention.”
“If true, that would be unfortunate, but worse things have happened,” Jackson wrote.
In a separate dissent, Justice Elena Kagan characterized the majority’s decision as a “mistake” that followed a “barebones briefing,” no argument and little time for reflection. Chief Justice John Roberts did not join either dissent but disagreed with the majority.
The move is the first time the Supreme Court has considered any challenges to President Donald Trump’s efforts to significantly scale back federal education programs — and ultimately dismantle the Education Department.
In the administration’s March 26 emergency request, Harris said the case is an example of a broader question the Supreme Court needs to answer: “‘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?”
“Unless and until this Court addresses that question, federal district courts will continue exceeding their jurisdiction by ordering the Executive Branch to restore lawfully terminated grants across the government, keep paying for programs that the Executive Branch views as inconsistent with the interests of the United States, and send out the door taxpayer money that may never be clawed back,” Harris wrote.
The case in question concerns the Education Department’s February cancellation of over $600 million in what it called “divisive” federal teacher training grants funds. The canceled grants had been made under the Teacher Quality Partnership Program and the Supporting Effective Educator Development program.
In March, eight Democratic attorneys general sued the Trump administration to restore the awarded funds. In response, Joun granted a temporary restraining order for the department to reinstate those funds to the eight plaintiff states: California, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Wisconsin.
If the Supreme Court were to order the Trump administration to reinstate the grants to those eight states, the acting solicitor general said, the department would have to disburse up to $65 million in remaining funds.
On March 28, the eight states urged in a 44-page filing that the Supreme Court leave Joun’s order in place. The states said the Trump administration’s “real concern” appears to involve other cases “where courts are grappling with a raft of legal disputes arising out of recent actions by the Executive Branch.”
“Those concerns are properly litigated in the context of those other cases,” the states said. “They provide no basis for this Court to grant emergency relief here, where the district court appropriately granted a narrow and time-limited restraining order to preserve the status quo while it adjudicates the preliminary-injunction motion that was argued earlier today.”
Advocates for the teacher preparation programs have said the disruption to the grant programs is harming K-12 educator pipeline initiatives and will add to teacher shortages.
In the March 10 district court order, Joun said the department’s justification for terminating the grants — that they promote diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives among other reasons — “does not reach the level of a reasoned explanation; indeed it amounts to no explanation at all.”
The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on March 21 denied the Trump administration’s motion for a stay while the government appealed Joun’s order.
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In a 5-4 split, the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday granted the Trump administration’s emergency request to maintain a freeze on millions of dollars in federal teacher training grants.
The administration’s emergency application, filed on March 26, asked the justices to vacate a district court judge’s order requiring the U.S. Department of Education to reinstate some of Trump’s $600 million in slashed funding. The justices granted Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris’ call for an immediate administrative stay, which pauses the March 10 order by Judge Myong Joun of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts while the case continues.
In an unsigned opinion, the Supreme Court majority wrote that the recipient programs wouldn’t suffer permanent damages if the funds were withheld while the case moves through the lower courts. The “respondents have not refuted the Government’s representation that it is unlikely to recover the grant funds once they are disbursed,” the opinion said.
The opinion also suggested the lower court may not have had the authority to issue its order.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, wrote that the notion that some grant recipients may seek to draw down funds that the Trump administration seeks to terminate was the “only hint of urgency that the Government offers to justify its unusual request for our intervention.”
“If true, that would be unfortunate, but worse things have happened,” Jackson wrote.
In a separate dissent, Justice Elena Kagan characterized the majority’s decision as a “mistake” that followed a “barebones briefing,” no argument and little time for reflection. Chief Justice John Roberts did not join either dissent but disagreed with the majority.
The move is the first time the Supreme Court has considered any challenges to President Donald Trump’s efforts to significantly scale back federal education programs — and ultimately dismantle the Education Department.
In the administration’s March 26 emergency request, Harris said the case is an example of a broader question the Supreme Court needs to answer: “‘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?”
“Unless and until this Court addresses that question, federal district courts will continue exceeding their jurisdiction by ordering the Executive Branch to restore lawfully terminated grants across the government, keep paying for programs that the Executive Branch views as inconsistent with the interests of the United States, and send out the door taxpayer money that may never be clawed back,” Harris wrote.
The case in question concerns the Education Department’s February cancellation of over $600 million in what it called “divisive” federal teacher training grants funds. The canceled grants had been made under the Teacher Quality Partnership Program and the Supporting Effective Educator Development program.
In March, eight Democratic attorneys general sued the Trump administration to restore the awarded funds. In response, Joun granted a temporary restraining order for the department to reinstate those funds to the eight plaintiff states: California, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Wisconsin.
If the Supreme Court were to order the Trump administration to reinstate the grants to those eight states, the acting solicitor general said, the department would have to disburse up to $65 million in remaining funds.
On March 28, the eight states urged in a 44-page filing that the Supreme Court leave Joun’s order in place. The states said the Trump administration’s “real concern” appears to involve other cases “where courts are grappling with a raft of legal disputes arising out of recent actions by the Executive Branch.”
“Those concerns are properly litigated in the context of those other cases,” the states said. “They provide no basis for this Court to grant emergency relief here, where the district court appropriately granted a narrow and time-limited restraining order to preserve the status quo while it adjudicates the preliminary-injunction motion that was argued earlier today.”
Advocates for the teacher preparation programs have said the disruption to the grant programs is harming K-12 educator pipeline initiatives and will add to teacher shortages.
In the March 10 district court order, Joun said the department’s justification for terminating the grants — that they promote diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives among other reasons — “does not reach the level of a reasoned explanation; indeed it amounts to no explanation at all.”
The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on March 21 denied the Trump administration’s motion for a stay while the government appealed Joun’s order.
