Supreme Court allows Trump to halt millions in teacher training grants

The Supreme Court on Friday afternoon put on hold an order by a federal judge in Massachusetts that would have required the Department of Education to reinstate more than $65 million in grants that it terminated in February because they funded programs that included diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

In an unsigned three-page opinion, a majority of the court explained that the government likely would not be able to get the funds back once they were disbursed. Moreover, the majority added, the recipients of the funds would not be permanently harmed if the funds are withheld while the litigation continues.

The vote was 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts indicating that he would have denied the government’s request. Justice Elena Kagan dissented, calling the court’s ruling a “mistake.” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in an opinion joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, also dissented, writing that it was “beyond puzzling that a majority of the Justices conceive of the Government’s application as an emergency.”

At issue in the case are two grant programs intended to address a nationwide shortage of teachers. The Department of Education canceled all but five of the 109 grants after reviews found “objectionable” diversity and equity training material in the recipient programs.

Eight states, led by California, filed a lawsuit in federal court in Massachusetts in early March. They contended that universities and nonprofits in their states had received grants through the programs, and that the Department of Education had violated the federal law governing administrative agencies when it ended those grants. 

A federal district judge issued a temporary order that required the government to reinstate the grants that it had terminated in the states bringing the lawsuit. U.S. District Judge Myong Joun also prohibited the government from implementing other terminations in those states.

The United States Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit declined to put the district court’s order on hold while the government appealed, but it fast-tracked the appeal itself.

The Trump administration came to the Supreme Court on March 24, asking the justices to step in. Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris asserted that unless the justices intervened, federal courts around the country will continue to exceed their powers “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 appealed to the justices to “put a swift end to federal district courts’ unconstitutional reign as self-appointed managers of Executive Branch funding and grant-disbursement decisions.”

California and the other states urged the court to stay out of the dispute. Joun, they said, “acted responsibly — entering a narrow and time-limited restraining order to preserve the status quo while moving rapidly to adjudicate” the state’s request for a preliminary injunction. The government cannot appeal the district court’s order, in any event the government’s appeal will be moot (that is, no longer a live controversy) by early April, they concluded.

In its order granting the Trump administration’s request on Friday, the majority first noted that although temporary orders like the one entered by Joun in this case are not normally appealable, it could nonetheless weigh in here because the order “carries many of the hallmarks of a preliminary injunction,” which can be appealed.

And the government is likely to show, the majority continued, that Joun lacked the power to order the government to make the payments under the federal law governing administrative agencies. Although that law waives the federal government’s general immunity from lawsuits, the majority explained, the waiver is a limited one that does not apply to court orders that would require the government to pay money for a contractual obligation. Instead, the majority continued, another federal law – the Tucker Act – gives another court, the Court of Federal Claims, the power to hear lawsuits arising from contracts with the United States.

Other considerations also weigh in favor of granting the government’s request, the majority wrote. On the one hand, the government contended (and the states do not dispute) that, once the funds are disbursed, it likely will not be able to recover them. By contrast, the majority stressed, the states have indicated that they have enough money to be able to continue their programs without the federal funding while the litigation moves forward.

Kagan complained that the government had not defended “the legality of canceling the education grants at issue” in this case. Moreover, she continued, the states challenging the termination of the grants do say that the termination of the grant “will force them—indeed, has already forced them—to curtail teacher training programs.” And the court’s conclusion that the dispute belongs in the Court of Federal Claims, rather than a federal district court, she suggested, is “at the very least under-developed, and very possibly wrong.”

More broadly, she wrote, the chance that the justices will make such a mistake increases when, as in this case, the justices act quickly, outside the normal briefing and argument schedule. She acknowledged that such fast action is sometimes necessary “despite the risk.” But for Kagan, “nothing about this case demanded our immediate intervention. Rather than make new law on our emergency docket,” she concluded, “we should have allowed the dispute to proceed in the ordinary way.”

Jackson called what she characterized as the majority’s “eagerness to insert itself into this early stage of ongoing litigation over the lawfulness” of the Department of Education’s actions “equal parts unprincipled and unfortunate.” Noting that Joun’s order will expire in just three days, she emphasized that it only bars the government from implementing a “mass termination” of grants; it does not prohibit the government from deciding, under its normal review process, to terminate individual grants.

Moreover, she continued, “there is no evidence that grantees have rushed to draw down the remaining $65 million in grant funds” in the 25 days since the order was entered. But if they did, she added, the government does have mechanisms to recover those funds.

Jackson criticized both the government’s decision to seek emergency relief without addressing the merits of the challenge and her colleagues’ decision to grant it, “If the emergency docket has now become a vehicle for certain defendants to obtain this Court’s real-time opinion about lower court rulings on various auxiliary matters, we should announce that new policy and be prepared to shift how we think about, and address, these kinds of applications.”

Finally, she insisted that the harm to the states challenging the grant terminations is – contrary to the majority’s suggestion – real. “In Massachusetts,” for example, she wrote, “Boston Public Schools has already had to fire multiple full-time employees due to this loss of grant-funding.”

This article was originally published at Howe on the Court.