Tag: Judge

  • For Now, Judge Won’t Restore Prof Calling for War on Israel

    For Now, Judge Won’t Restore Prof Calling for War on Israel

    A UK professor will not get to return to teaching while the university continues investigating him.

    Gwengoat/iStock/Getty Images Plus

    A federal judge is, for now, declining to return to the classroom a professor whom the University of Kentucky removed from teaching amid his calls for a global war to end Israel’s existence as a country.

    On his website, antizionist.net, law professor Ramsi Woodcock asks fellow legal scholars to sign a “Petition for Military Action Against Israel.” He says Israel is a colony and war is needed to decolonize, and he calls for the war to continue until “Israel has submitted permanently and unconditionally to the government of Palestine.”

    The university removed him from teaching in July. In a message to campus that month, UK president Eli Capilouto wrote, “We have been made aware of allegations of disturbing conduct, including an online petition calling for the destruction of a people based on national origin.” (Woodcock says he’s calling for the end of the state of Israel, not the destruction of Jews.)

    In November, Woodcock sued UK in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, asking for restoration of his normal teaching duties and other relief. On Thursday, Judge Danny C. Reeves paused the case while the university’s investigation proceeds.

    “As is customary for the University investigating claims that potentially impact the educational environment, Woodcock was removed from teaching and the law building as an interim measure during the investigation,” Reeves said. “Abstention is appropriate because those removals cannot be separated from the investigation and interference clearly would result if the Court were to enjoin any aspect of the investigation.”

    Reeves added that “once the investigation is completed or any subsequent disciplinary procedures have concluded and claims have been exhausted, the stay will be lifted.”

    In a statement, a UK spokesperson said the university “appreciates the Court’s thoughtful and clear ruling.” Woodcock, in his own statement, suggested he may appeal, saying UK officials were “torching the First Amendment and the university’s own regulations in an effort to protect a colonization project that practices apartheid and commits genocide.”

    “There is very strong precedent stretching back to the Civil War that federal courts must intervene when rogue state actors, like university officials in my case, abuse their authority to try to silence speech that they happen to dislike,“ he wrote.

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  • Federal judge halts layoffs, anti-DEI measures at Head Start

    Federal judge halts layoffs, anti-DEI measures at Head Start

    Dive Brief:

    • The Trump administration’s efforts to restrict Head Start’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and downsize the early childhood education program were dealt a blow Tuesday, after a federal judge in Washington state temporarily blocked actions taken by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last year.
    • The preliminary injunction from the U.S. District Court in Seattle says HHS’ anti-DEI warnings to Head Start providers puts them “in an impossible situation” where they cannot comply with the government’s DEI prohibitions while also fulfilling the program’s purpose, which is to provide early childhood education for historically underserved populations.
    • The temporary block also postpones mass office closures and layoffs at the Office of Head Start, which — together with the DEI ban — disrupted programs nationwide. The pause applies to programs nationwide, said attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union, which is litigating the case.

    Dive Insight:

    The case was partly prompted by a letter sent to Head Start providers in March, which stated “The Office of Head Start will not approve the use of federal funding for any training and technical assistance (TTA) or other program expenditures that promote or take part in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.” 

    The letter told recipients to “carefully review their annual funding application, including the budget and budget justification narrative, TTA plans, program goals, and any other supplemental materials to ensure they are in accordance with this change.” 

    Two weeks later, on April 1, 2025, HHS closed half of Head Start regional offices and laid off those staff, which left Head Start agencies in 23 states in the lurch, according to the original complaint filed in April by the ACLU. 

    After that, as Head Start programs had difficulty accessing federal grant funds that were already allocated to them and faced other funding issues, the programs were asked to certify that they did not promote DEI, accessibility or “discriminatory equity ideology.” 

    Head Start providers in Washington, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Wisconsin said in the court documents that the slew of federal changes “have started to dismantle the program piece by piece, resulting in what Head Start agency directors across the country describe as ‘chaos’ that impedes their ability to effectively continue running their programs.” Head Start programs were designed by Congress to provide services that reflect the needs of their communities and serve marginalized populations. 

    Head Start serves about 750,000 infants, toddlers and preschool children a year. More than 17,000 Head Start centers operate nationwide with the support of 250,000 staff, according to the National Head Start Association, which represents the program’s families, students and staff. 

    The court documents pausing the changes on Tuesday say that HHS returned one Wisconsin program director’s grant application and provided her a list of of 197 terms to exclude from applications, including but not limited to “Black,” “diversity,” “disability,” “women,” “tribal,” “equality,” “mental health” and “barrier.” 

    In another case in Washington, a program requested professional development on working with children with autism to support more than 10% of its enrolled children, “but they were forced to remove these plans along with the other ‘prohibited’ terms from applications as ‘a condition of grant renewal,’” the Tuesday court documents say.

    “When a Head Start program has their funding withheld because of their efforts to provide effective education to children with autism, serve tribal members on a reservation, or treat all families with respect, it is an attack on the fundamental promise of the Head Start program — that even children who are furthest away from opportunity should be given the early education they need to succeed in school,” said Joel Ryan, executive director of the Washington State Head Start and Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program, in a Jan. 7 statement.

    HHS did not respond to K-12 Dive’s requests for comment.

    The preliminary injunction by Judge Ricardo Martinez comes after other blocks issued by judges in September on HHS’ efforts to exclude some immigrant families from Head Start services. 

    Measures by the U.S. Department of Education to cut DEI from education or education-related services have also been successfully challenged. 

    Multiple rulings by federal judges last spring struck down the Education Department’s anti-DEI policy, which one judge said raises “the specter of a public ‘witch hunt’ that will sow fear and doubt among teachers.” That anti-DEI policy included an “End DEI portal” and a Title VI certification requirement, which was overturned. 

    Title VI protects students against racial discrimination and has typically been invoked to protect historically underserved races, but the Trump administration has used it to prohibit DEI initiatives, saying such measures discriminate against White people.

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  • Judge rules in Trump’s favour over $100K H-1B visa fee hike

    Judge rules in Trump’s favour over $100K H-1B visa fee hike

    The judge ruled on December 23 that it was within the President’s powers to regulate immigration, rejecting arguments brought by the Chamber of Commerce that the proclamation exceeded Trump’s statutory authority.  

    “The parties’ vigorous debate over the ultimate wisdom of this political judgment is not within the province of the courts,” wrote the Obama-appointed judge Beryl Howell.  

    “So long as the actions dictated by the policy decision and articulated in the Proclamation fit within the confines of the law, the Proclamation must be upheld.” 

    The lawsuit is among two other cases challenging Trump’s controversial $100K fee for H-1B petitions, which the plaintiffs argued would lead companies, hospitals and other employers to cut jobs and weaken the services they provide to the public.  

    It was brought by the US Chamber of Commerce – the world’s largest business federation with roughly 300,000 members – and the Association of American Universities (AAU), which represents 69 US-based research universities. 

    Following the proclamation, the administration clarified international students changing status in the US would be exempt from the fee, though stakeholders have said it will undermine America’s leadership in education, research and innovation.  

    Zuzana Cepla Wootson, deputy director of federal policy at the Presidents’ Alliance, called the judge’s decision “deeply disappointing”. 

    “The United States must stop deterring the very talent that strengthens our classrooms, fuels our economy, and drives American innovation,” she said, urging Congress to “pursue bipartisan solutions that support US prosperity and competitiveness”.  

    The White House welcomed the ruling as a victory for American workers, vowing that Trump would continue to protect them from being replaced by “cheap, foreign labour”.

    “The $100,000 payment accompanying any new H1-B petition is a necessary and long-overdue first step to reform the H-1B visa program that has been abused at the expense of hardworking Americans,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers told The PIE.

    The fee, which is still being challenged by two other lawsuits, hikes the cost of an H-1B visa petition by more than 20 times the previous charge, which ranged between $2,000 and $5,000.  

    The H-1B visa program enables US employers to temporarily hire international workers in “specialty occupations” from healthcare to computer science and financial analysis. California’s tech industry is particularly reliant on the visa stream.   

    The United States must stop deterring the very talent that strengthens our classrooms, fuels our economy, and drives American innovation

    Zuzana Cepla Wootson, Presidents’ Alliance

    “The $100,000 fee makes H-1B visas cost prohibitive for businesses, especially small- and medium-sized businesses that can least afford it,” Chamber of Commerce executive vice president Daryl Joseffer said after the ruling.  

    He said the chamber was considering further legal action and underscored the positive economic benefits of the H-1B stream, which has been found to reduce unemployment rates and lead to faster wage growths for US employers, according to the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP).  

    Howell’s ruling came the same day as the government finalised a rule to replace the random H-1B selection process with a weighted system favouring higher earners – something critics say will harm the US tech industry and dampen the country’s appeal among international students. The new process will come into effect on February 27.  

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  • Federal judge rules California teachers are allowed to ‘out’ transgender students to parents

    Federal judge rules California teachers are allowed to ‘out’ transgender students to parents

    Parents rights supporters attend a rally in Simi Valley on Sept. 26, 2023.,the night before a Republican presidential primary debate.

    Credit: Courtesy of Rebecca Holz / California Policy Center

    Top Takeaways
    • A judge ruled parents have the right to know if a student expresses gender incongruence.
    • California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office applied to stay the court’s injunction.
    • The ruling may ultimately be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

    A federal judge issued a ruling Monday that strikes down California school policies aimed at preventing schools from revealing a student’s gender identity to their parents.

    The class action suit, filed by California teachers and parents, hinges on whether TK-12 educators can breach a student’s confidentiality and tell parents that students are using a name or pronoun other than what they have been assigned at birth.

    U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez, of San Diego, ruled in favor of two Escondido Union School District teachers, Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West, who claimed that district policies “flatly prohibit teachers from respecting parents’ wishes.” The middle school teachers named district officials in the suit and said district policies violated the teachers’ constitutional free speech and religious rights.

    Benitez, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote in his order granting summary judgment that California’s public schools “place a communication barrier between parents and teachers.” The judgment applies to all California public schools, not just the original North San Diego County district.

    “Parents and guardians have a federal constitutional right to be informed if their public school student child expresses gender incongruence,” Benitez wrote. “Teachers and school staff have a federal constitutional right to accurately inform the parent or guardian of their student when the student expresses gender incongruence.”

    The suit, filed in April 2023, named California state officials, including State Superintendent Tony Thurmond, the State Board of Education and Attorney General Rob Bonta.

    Benitez’s ruling references guidance that the California Department of Education shared with school districts, including an FAQ that has since been deleted, as well as cultural competency training. But he stated that this case is not about California Assembly Bill 1955, which prohibits forcing teachers to disclose the gender identity of their students. 

    The Support Academic Futures and Educators for Today’s Youth, or SAFETY Act, was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in July 2024, in response to more than a dozen California school boards proposing or passing parental notification policies that required school staff to inform parents if a child asks to use a name or pronoun different from the one assigned at birth.

    A statement from the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus says that Benitez’s ruling “deliberately injects confusion into the public understanding” of the SAFETY Act and “signals an alarming willingness to undermine long-standing constitutional rights to privacy and nondiscrimination protections across California law.”

    Bonta’s office on Monday filed a brief seeking to stay the court’s injunction. A spokesperson for Bonta said the district court misapplied the law and that the decision will ultimately be reversed on appeal.

    “We are committed to securing school environments that allow transgender students to safely participate as their authentic selves while recognizing the important role that parents play in students’ lives,” said a statement from Bonta’s office.

    Benitez referenced the U.S. Supreme Court decision this summer in Mahmoud v. Taylor, which granted public school parents the right to withdraw from materials and discussions that conflict with their sincerely held religious beliefs.

    A statement from the Thomas More Society, the Chicago-based conservative Catholic law firm that took on the case, called the judge’s decision a “landmark class-action ruling.” 

    “Today’s incredible victory finally, and permanently, ends California’s dangerous and unconstitutional regime of gender secrecy policies in schools,” said Paul M. Jonna, special counsel at Thomas More Society and a partner at LiMandri & Jonna.

    The American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement that this ruling puts transgender and gender-nonforming students at risk of being outed.

    “A culture of outing harms everyone — students, families, and school staff alike — by removing opportunities to build trust. LGBTQ+ students deserve to decide on their own terms if, when, and how to come out, and to be able to be themselves at school,” said Christine Parker, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Foundation of Southern California.

    An attorney for the Escondido Union School District argued in court documents that both the California Constitution and the state education code protect the privacy rights of students in many contexts. For instance, the California Supreme Court has held that children have the right to an abortion without state notification of their parents. And school counselors are barred from disclosing confidential information if the counselor believes that it would result in a danger to the health or safety of the student.

    Legal experts said the case is likely to reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

    When the case came up during a panel at the California School Boards Association conference in Sacramento earlier this month, Anthony De Marco, a partner at the firm Atkinson, Andelson, Loya, Ruud & Romo, which represents school districts, called it a “direct attack” on California education. 

    “It crosses a line,” De Marco said, while speaking to board members about important legal issues they may be facing. “Certified employees should not be able to opt out.”

    Jeff Freitas, president of the California Federation of Teachers, called the court decision “an attack on the safety of our students and educators.” He said that as a math teacher, he witnessed students who were struggling with issues that they wanted to keep private from their parents.

    “Students more often go to their parents than their teachers,” Freitas said. “If they’re not going to their parents, there’s probably a reason why.”

    EdSource reporter Thomas Peele contributed to this report.

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  • Federal judge denies request for 18-month delay in landmark borrower defense settlement

    Federal judge denies request for 18-month delay in landmark borrower defense settlement

    Dive Brief: 

    • A federal judge on Thursday denied the U.S. Department of Education’s request for an 18-month extension to decide borrower defense claim decisions due by the end of January, according to lawyers representing the borrowers. 
    • The affected borrowers belong to the last of three groups covered under a landmark 2022 settlement with the Education Department to resolve a class-action lawsuit that accused the agency of stonewalling borrower defense applications. Under that agreement, the borrowers were set to receive automatic relief if the agency didn’t decide their cases by Jan. 28. 
    • U.S. District Judge William Alsup declined to provide any extension on claims filed by borrowers who attended one of 151 institutions that the Education Department previously said had strong indications of engaging in “substantial misconduct.” For other borrowers, Alsup extended the deadline for the Education Department to resolve their cases to April 15. 

    Dive Insight: 

    The Sweet v. McMahon lawsuit, originally filed in 2019 during the first Trump administration, accused the Education Department of improperly delaying decisions on borrower defense to repayment claims. The program provides debt relief to borrowers who were defrauded by their colleges. 

    Three years later, under the Biden administration, the Education Department struck a settlement that promised either timely decisions or automatic relief to three separate groups of borrowers. 

    The agency said it would automatically clear debts for the first group, roughly 200,000 borrowers who attended one of 151 colleges listed by the Education Department. In court documents, the Education Department said that “attendance at one of these schools justifies presumptive relief” because the institutions had strong signs of misconduct. 

    The second group is composed of borrowers who didn’t attend one of those colleges. The Education Department promised to make decisions for them by certain dates depending on when those borrowers applied for relief — or automatic relief if it didn’t meet those deadlines. 

    The majority of those borrowers have had their claims approved, with only a small share still pending, according to a court filing earlier this month. 

    The last group is composed of those who filed borrower defense applications after the Education Department had already struck the settlement but before it received final approval. That group is composed of roughly 207,000 people who filed over 251,000 claims following the settlement’s announcement. 

    Alsup denied granting any extension to the Education Department for borrowers in that group who attended the agency’s list of 151 colleges. Around 80% of borrower defense applications filed by the last group involve one of those institutions, according to the Project on Predatory Student Lending, a legal nonprofit representing the borrowers. The remainder will face a roughly 2 and ½ month delay. 

    “The Court sent a clear message today: borrowers deserve fair, timely decisions, not years of uncertainty,” Eileen Connor, president and executive director of PPSL, said in a statement Thursday. “This is a critical victory for people who have waited far too long for justice and relief, but this case isn’t over.” 

    The Education Department is still “evaluating the impact of the order,” Ellen Keast, the agency’s press secretary for higher education, said in a Friday email. 

    “We remain committed to doing the right thing for students, families, and taxpayers,” Keast said.

    The Education Department asked for the delay in early November, projecting that it still would not have reached decisions on roughly 193,000 borrower defense applications from the final group by the Jan. 28 deadline. The agency argued it didn’t have the resources it needed to adjudicate the group’s claims and had seen “staffing dwindle at the time when resources for postclass adjudication are most needed.”

    The Education Department has cut roughly half of its staff under President Donald Trump, who signed an executive order in March for the agency to close by the “maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.”

    The final group in the settlement has a total outstanding loan balance of $11.8 billion, according to the agency’s court filing. The Education Department said it had issued decisions on roughly 54,000 borrower defense applications for the group by October, and it had denied roughly half of them.

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  • Feds cannot withhold funding from UC system amid lawsuit, judge rules

    Feds cannot withhold funding from UC system amid lawsuit, judge rules

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    Dive Brief:

    • A federal judge on Friday issued a preliminary injunction barring the Trump administration from freezing the University of California system’s research funding as part of civil rights investigations. 
    • In a scathing ruling, U.S. District Judge Rita Lin found the administration’s actions unconstitutional, describing “a playbook of initiating civil rights investigations of preeminent universities to justify cutting off federal funding,” with the aim of “forcing them to change their ideological tune.”
    • While a lawsuit over the Trump administration’s actions is ongoing, Lin barred the federal government from using civil rights investigations to freeze UC grant money, condition its grants on any measure that would violate recipients’ speech rights, or seek fines and other money from the system.

    Dive Insight:

     In her ruling, Lin described a “three-stage playbook” that the Trump administration uses to target universities. First, an agency involved with the administration’s Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism announces civil rights investigations or planned enforcement actions. Then, the administration issues mass grants cancellations without following legally mandated administrative procedures, Lin wrote.

    In the third stage, Lin said, the U.S. Department of Justice demands payment of millions or billions of dollars in addition to other policy changes in return for restored funding. A DOJ spokesperson on Monday declined to comment on the lawsuit. 

    In the case of UC, the judge ruled that plaintiffs — a coalition of faculty groups and unions, including the American Association of University Professors — provided “overwhelming evidence” of the administration’s “concerted campaign to purge ‘woke,’ ‘left,’ and ‘socialist’ viewpoints from our country’s leading universities.”

    “It is undisputed that this precise playbook is now being executed at the University of California,” wrote Lin, citing public statements by Leo Terrell, senior counsel in the DOJ’s civil rights wing and the head of administration’s antisemitism task force. Terrell alleged that the UC system had been “hijacked by the left” and vowed to open investigations. 

    The Trump administration did just that. In August, it froze $584 million in research funding at the University of California, Los Angeles after concluding that the institution violated civil rights law. It primarily cited UCLA’s decision to allow a 2024 pro-Palestinian protest encampment to remain on campus for almost a week before calling in the police. 

    The administration has sought a $1.2 billion penalty from UCLA to release the funds and settle the allegations. “The costs associated with this demand, if left to stand, would have far-reaching consequences,” Chancellor Julio Frenk said in a public message in August. 

    Lin noted in her Friday ruling that the administration also sought settlement terms “that had nothing to do with antisemitism,” including policy changes to how UCLA handles student protests, an adoption of the administration’s views on gender, and a review of its diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

    The administration’s campaign resulted in a significant and ongoing chilling of faculty’s actions, both in and out of the classroom, Lin said.

    In addition to teaching and conducting research differently, members of the plaintiff groups have also changed how they engage in public discourse and limited their participation in protest, Lin said. Faculty have self-censored on topics such as structural racism and scrubbed their websites of references to DEI out of fear of reprisal. 

    “These are classic, predictable First Amendment harms, and exactly what Defendants publicly said that they intended,” Lin concluded.

    While acknowledging the importance of combating antisemitism, Lin said the government was “silent on what actions UCLA took to address” antisemitism issues on its campus between May of 2024, when pro-Palestinian protesters established an encampment, and July 2025, when the DOJ concluded UCLA had violated civil rights law by not doing enough to protect Jewish students from harassment.

    As part of a separate lawsuit, Lin in September ordered the National Institutes of Health and other agencies to restore suspended grants to UCLA. 

    UCLA and the UC system are just one of several prominent universities similarly targeted by the federal government. At least five institutions so far have signed deals with the Trump administration to resolve federal civil investigations. The agreements brokered by Columbia, Brown and Cornell universities require each to pay millions of dollars to the federal government, causes favored by the Trump administration or both.

    Harvard University, on the other hand, has fought back against the administration’s tactics. After repeated federal attacks, accompanied by unprecedented ultimatums, the university sued the administration and successfully had the government’s $2.2 billion funding freeze against it reversed. The Trump administration has previously stated its intent to appeal. 

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  • Arkansas Judge Orders Removal of Ten Commandments Displays from Lakeside School District – The 74

    Arkansas Judge Orders Removal of Ten Commandments Displays from Lakeside School District – The 74


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    A federal judge on Friday ordered Ten Commandments posters be removed from Lakeside School District, two days after he permitted the Garland County district to be added to a lawsuit challenging a new state law requiring the displays.

    Following passage of Act 573 of 2025 this spring, public schools are now required to “prominently” display a “historical representation” of the Ten Commandments in classrooms and libraries. The posters must be donated or bought with funds from voluntary contributions. The law also requires them to be displayed in public colleges and universities and other public buildings maintained by taxpayer funds.

    Seven Northwest Arkansas families of various religious and nonreligious backgrounds filed a lawsuit in June challenging the constitutionality of the statute. The families allege the state law violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which guarantees that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” and its Free Exercise Clause, which guarantees that “Congress shall make no law … prohibiting the free exercise [of religion].”

    Supporters of the law have argued the tenets have historical significance because they influenced the country’s founders in creating the nation’s laws and legal system.

    U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks granted a preliminary injunction in August that blocked implementation of the statute in four districts — Bentonville, Fayetteville, Siloam Springs and Springdale.

    Brooks later allowed the Conway School District to be added to the suit as a defendant and district families as plaintiffs. He also ordered Ten Commandments posters be removed from the district’s schools and converted a temporary restraining order against the district into a preliminary injunction.

    A temporary restraining order temporarily halts an action and may be issued immediately, without informing all parties and without holding a hearing. It’s intended to last until a court holds a hearing on whether to grant a preliminary injunction, according to Cornell Law School.

    After Brooks granted permission Wednesday to add Lakeside School District as a defendant and Christine Benson and her minor child as plaintiffs in the case, attorneys for the plaintiffs filed a motion for a temporary restraining order and/or preliminary injunction on Thursday.

    Brooks granted the temporary restraining order Friday and held the preliminary injunction in abeyance. He also temporarily blocked Lakeside from complying with the law and ordered the district to remove Ten Commandments displays from its schools by 5 p.m. Monday.

    “A temporary restraining order should issue as to Lakeside School District No. 9,” Brooks wrote in Friday’s order. “Lakeside Plaintiffs are identically situated to the original Plaintiffs: They advance the same legal arguments, assert the same constitutional injuries, and request the same relief.”

    Defendants and the attorney general’s office, which intervened in the case, have until Nov. 3 to submit briefs to address why the existing preliminary injunction should not be modified to include Lakeside School District as a defendant, according to Friday’s order.

    Arkansas Advocate is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: [email protected].


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  • Judge halts layoffs of federal employees — for now

    Judge halts layoffs of federal employees — for now

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    On Wednesday, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to immediately stop the mass firing of federal employees during the government shutdown. 

    The Trump administration cannot issue any additional reduction-in-force notices, and it cannot enforce the notices already issued, according to the ruling from Judge Susan Illston of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. 

    The temporary block follows a Sept. 30 lawsuit filed by two unions — the American Federation of Government Employees and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — against the U.S. Office of Management and Budget for violating the law when OMB Director Russ Vought threatened a mass firing of federal workers during a shutdown. 

    For the second time this year, the Trump administration on Oct. 10 laid off a significant number of staff in the U.S. Department of Education, as part of President Donald Trump’s broader effort to abolish the agency. 

    The first round of RIF notices at the Education Department came in March, leading the agency to get entangled in multiple lawsuits that challenged the legality of those firings. 

    Before Trump took office on Jan. 20, the department had 4,133 employees. In March, that dwindled to 2,183. The number of staff then dipped further to an estimated 2,000 after the Oct. 10 firings, which also impacted other federal agencies nearly two weeks after a federal shutdown began after lawmakers failed to reach an agreement on the federal budget.   

    Meanwhile, U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a X post on Wednesday that schools are operating as normal despite the government shutdown, which confirms that the U.S. Department of Education is “unnecessary.”

    “The Department has taken additional steps to better reach American students and families and root out the education bureaucracy that has burdened states and educators with unnecessary oversight,” McMahon wrote. “No education funding is impacted by the RIF, including funding for special education, and the clean CR [continuing resolution] supported by the Trump Administration will provide states and schools the funding they need to support all students.”

    Here’s a timeline of events leading up to the agency’s latest round of RIFs and the continued downsizing of the federal education footprint.

    • March 11, 2025

      The Education Department announced a massive reduction in force, with plans to slash nearly half of its workforce, impacting all divisions within the federal agency — some “requiring significant reorganization,” according to McMahon.

      The cuts, along with previously accepted employee “buyouts,” reduced the department’s headcount from 4,133 when Trump was inaugurated Jan. 20 to approximately 2,183 — affecting over 1,900 employees.

    • March 12, 2025

      As part of the Education Department’s mass downsizing of its staff, the agency also shuttered seven of its 12 civil rights enforcement offices. The seven closed offices of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights oversaw half of the nation’s states, impacting nearly 60,000 public schools and over 30 million K-12 students.

      The Trump administration also informed all seven Office of Educational Technology employees in an email that their positions and office were being “abolished” as the Education Department announced massive layoffs across the agency the day prior.

    • March 20, 2025

      President Donald Trump signed an executive order calling on McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education,” marking the boldest push from the president to shut down the agency since its establishment under the Carter administration over four decades ago.

    • April 14, 2025

      A lawsuit was filed against the Trump administration over its significant downsizing of the Education Department’s Institute of Education Sciences in March. The lawsuit from the American Educational Research Association and the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness said the layoffs made it impossible for IES to carry out education research.

      A similar lawsuit disputing the IES cuts was filed by the Association for Education Finance and Policy and the Institute for Higher Education Policy on April 4 in federal court.

    • April 17, 2025

      Despite massive layoffs that left the Education Department with a skeleton crew in charge of administering and analyzing the Nation’s Report Card, the agency said the assessment will continue as planned in 2026.

    • June 18, 2025

      A federal judge ordered the Education Department to reinstate all laid-off Office for Civil Rights employees for the time being, saying the layoffs and shuttering of seven regional offices had rendered the remaining staff “incapable of addressing the vast majority of OCR complaints.”

    • July 14, 2025

      The U.S. Supreme Court allows the Trump administration to carry on with its efforts to lay off nearly half the Education Department’s staff as lower courts weigh in on the layoffs’ legality in New York v. McMahon.

    • July 15, 2025

      Management of key federal workforce development programs began shifting from the Education Department to the U.S. Department of Labor under an interagency agreement signed in May, both agencies announced.

    • Aug. 19, 2025

      Following a federal judge’s order directing that the Education Department be restored to “the status quo,” the agency said it plans to bring back more than 260 Office for Civil Rights staff who were cut as part of the March reduction in force, and it will be returning groups of employees to the civil rights enforcement arm in waves every two weeks from Sept. 8 through Nov. 3.

    • Sept. 29, 2025

      The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court’s order requiring the Education Department to restore the Office for Civil Rights to the “status quo,” which also allowed the department to move forward with plans to cut half of its OCR staff as litigation proceeds.

    • Oct. 1, 2025

      The federal government enters the first day of its shutdown as Congress remains at a funding impasse for fiscal year 2026. During the shutdown, the Education Department planned to furlough about 95% of its non-Federal Student Aid staff for the first week, according to a Sept. 28 memo from U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon.

      The Trump administration’s Office of Management and Budget issued a memo a week before that threatened mass firings of federal employees if a government shutdown occurs, according to a Sept. 30 lawsuit filed by labor unions against OMB.

    • Oct. 10, 2025

      The Trump administration issued reduction-in-force notices throughout the federal government, including at the Education Department where court filings show 466 Education Department employees were impacted by the layoffs. Most of the employees at the Office of Special Education Programs — where staffing had remained fairly stable — were laid off as part of the department’s second wave of RIF notices this year, according to several special education professional organizations.

      The latest RIFs also reached Education Department offices that oversee civil rights, student achievement supports, budgeting services, school safety, postsecondary education and more, according to the American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing more than 2,700 Education Department employees.

    • Oct. 15, 2025

      A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to cease any mass firings of federal employees initiated during the government shutdown. The temporary block came in response to a lawsuit filed by two federal employee unions against OMB over the office’s threats to initiate mass firings ahead of the Oct. 1 shutdown.

      Judge Susan Illston of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California said the administration’s issuance of reduction-in-force notices to over 4,000 employees throughout the federal government during the shutdown is illegal, exceeds the administration’s authority and is arbitrary and capricious.

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  • Judge Halts UT’s Comprehensive Ban on Student Speech

    Judge Halts UT’s Comprehensive Ban on Student Speech

    SB 2972 was passed after students at several public Texas universities protested the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

    Jon Shapley/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images

    A Texas district court judge on Tuesday ordered the University of Texas system to hold off on enforcing new, sweeping limits on student expression that would prohibit any “expressive activity” protected by the First Amendment between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. 

    “The First Amendment does not have a bedtime of 10 p.m.,” wrote U.S. district court judge David Alan Ezra in his order granting the plaintiff’s request for a preliminary injunction. “Giving administrators discretion to decide what is prohibited ‘disruptive’ speech gives the school the ability to weaponize the policy against speech it disagrees with. As an example, the Overnight Expression Ban would, by its terms, prohibit a sunrise Easter service. While the university may not find this disruptive, the story may change if it’s a Muslim or Jewish sunrise ceremony. The songs and prayer of the Muslim and Jewish ceremonies, while entirely harmless, may be considered ‘disruptive’ by some.”

    A coalition of student groups—including the student-run Retrograde Newspaper, the Fellowship of Christian University Students at the University of Texas at Dallas and the student music group Strings Attached—sued to challenge the restrictions, which, in addition to prohibiting expression overnight, also sought to ban campus public speakers, the use of drums and amplified noise during the last two weeks of the semester. The restrictive policies align with Texas Senate Bill 2972, called the Campus Protection Act, which requires public universities to adopt restrictions on student speech and expression. The bill took effect on Sept. 1. 

    “Texas’ law is so overbroad that any public university student chatting in the dorms past 10 p.m. would have been in violation,” said Adam Steinbaugh, a senior attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, in a press release. “We’re thankful that the court stepped in and halted a speech ban that inevitably would’ve been weaponized to censor speech that administrators disagreed with.”

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  • Federal judge dismisses legal challenge to gainful employment rule

    Federal judge dismisses legal challenge to gainful employment rule

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    Dive Brief: 

    • A federal judge dismissed a case Thursday that challenged the legality of the Biden administration’s gainful employment rule, which aims to ensure that graduates of career education programs earn enough to pay off their student loan debt. 
    • U.S. District Judge Reed O’Conner — a George W. Bush appointee — rejected arguments from cosmetology school groups that the gainful employment rule overstepped the U.S. Department of Education’s authority and violated their constitutional rights. 
    • Although the Biden-era rule survived the legal challenge, the Trump administration is considering potential changes to the gainful employment regulations in the coming months. 

    Dive Insight: 

    The Biden administration finalized the gainful employment rule in 2023. Under the rule, career education programs must prove that they provide graduates with an earnings bump and don’t leave borrowers with more debt than they can manage. 

    To do so, the gainful employment rule establishes two separate tests. Under one, the median program graduate must pay no more than 8% of their annual earnings or 20% of their discretionary income toward their debt. Under the other, at least half of a program’s graduates must outearn workers in their state with only a high school diploma. 

    College programs that fail either of these metrics in two out of three consecutive years risk losing access to federal financial aid. The rule primarily impacts programs at for-profit colleges, but also applies to certificates at all institutions. 

    Thursday’s ruling addresses two consolidated lawsuits against the rule. The cosmetology school groups had argued that the Education Department had overstepped its authority when issuing the regulations, as the Higher Education Act doesn’t define gainful employment.

    However, O’Connor wrote that the Education Department’s rule follows the plain meaning of the statute. 

    “Although the 2023 Rule is in the form of an equation, it no less does the same work as the words ‘gainful employment,’ by ensuring the programs lead to profitable jobs, instead of loan deficits,” O’Connor wrote. 

    The plaintiffs had also alleged that they would be unfairly penalized by the rule, arguing that a large share of income in the cosmetology industry goes unreported because it is earned through cash tips. Because of that, they said, the Education Department’s calculations would fail to accurately capture how much their graduates earn. 

    O’Connor rejected those arguments, noting that the Education Department had cited studies showing that underreporting is not widespread. 

    National Student Legal Defense Network, an advocacy and legal group for students, praised the ruling Thursday. 

    “Higher education is supposed to offer students a path to a better life, not a debt-filled dead end,” Student Defense Vice President and Chief Counsel Dan Zibel said in a statement. “The 2023 Gainful Employment Rule reflects a common-sense policy to ensure that students are not wasting time and money on career programs that provide little value.”

    Jason Altmire, president and CEO of Career Education Colleges and Universities, an association that represents the for-profit college sector, decried Thursday’s ruling but sounded optimistic about forthcoming regulatory changes under the Trump administration. 

    “Although we strongly disagree with the ruling today, we look forward to this issue being revisited by the current Department of Education,” Altmire said in a statement that day. “We are confident the Biden Gainful Employment Rule will be revised to incorporate a fairer accountability measure that will apply equally to all schools, ensuring all students can benefit.”

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