In total, 142 former staffers across six government agencies filed last month, arguing that the Trump administration appeared to target specific employees rather than carry out the reductions in an objective way.

“It’s very clear that this wasn’t a dispassionate, neutral workplace reorganization,” said Jill Siegelbaum, a partner with Sligo Law Group, which brought the lawsuit with Lawyers for Good Government and the D.C. Law Collective. “Individuals were called unpatriotic. They were called lazy. There were all sorts of disparaging statements made about these individuals.”

In her letter to staff put on leave last year, McMahon said the terminations had nothing to do with . But to , she characterized the problem as “bureaucratic bloat” and said that under her leadership, the department had kept “all of the right people, the good people.” President Donald Trump many of the employees cut at the department “don’t work at all” and “never showed up to work.” 

The action adds to mounting lawsuits over the mass layoffs. brought by Democratic-led states and school districts last year, officials argued that the reductions have left the department without adequate staff to do the work mandated by Congress. Last week, advocates for victims of sexual assault in a letter that the Office for Civil Rights didn’t resolve any complaints of sexual harassment or violence in 2025. Department officials say that the layoffs were necessary to cut red tape and give more control to the states.

In this latest case, the former employees say the administration denied their due process rights. The Education Department did not respond to questions about the case.

Denise Joseph, who lost her position in the Office of Postsecondary Education, found herself at odds with the new administration because of her work on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

“I helped people get promotions. I helped protect the people from getting fired. I just mentored a lot of people,” she said. “And I’m a Democrat, and so I don’t think they wanted someone like me.”

She now runs a tutoring service and works part time for Kodely, a company that provides afterschool and summer programs. She also recently launched a campaign for a seat on the Charles County, Maryland, school board. 

Other Education Department plaintiffs include those who worked on special education, data collection, and career and technical education. Like Joseph, they have all filed an appeal to the government’s Merit Systems Protection Board, originally meant to be an independent body. The Trump administration has moved to weaken protections for career staff. According to the , the board has to adopt the government’s reasons for the employee’s dismissal and can no longer seek an outside review by a judge. 

The employees are “faced with the potential harm of having their case heard by a completely captured administrative process,” the complaint says. Plus, the attorneys argue, the board is so overwhelmed because of the layoffs that few appeals have progressed beyond initial steps.

When federal employees are fired “for cause,” the government is required to , like giving them advance notice and allowing them to respond to the reasons for their dismissal. 

Those steps protect the employees before they lose their benefits, Siegelbaum said. But the Education Department and the other agencies — Justice, State, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security and USAID — didn’t follow that process. According to the complaint, the agencies also relied on incorrect data when deciding who to cut. For example, Deborah Fisher, who worked for the State Department, had 39 years of federal service, but her layoff notice reflected only about 20 years.

Loyalty question

The administration holds that the president should have more say over the federal workforce and be able to replace staff with those more politically aligned. Those were the goals outlined in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation document that Russell Vought spearheaded before he became director of the Office of Management and Budget.

He introduced a new hiring plan that included the question: “How would you help advance the President’s Executive Orders and policy priorities in this role?” Unions representing federal employees in November, arguing that the “loyalty question” compels applicants to praise Trump’s policies or risk being punished for giving an honest answer.

In a separate move, the administration issued a that reclassified thousands of jobs across the government as “policymaking positions” without civil service protections. Democracy Forward, a nonprofit legal group that has challenged many of Trump’s policies, is over the regulation. 

Some experts say choosing federal employees based on partisanship is disruptive and can ultimately hurt the schools and students the department is meant to serve. Presidents already have to make 4,000 political appointments, and many don’t even stay for the full four years of an administration. The new rule potentially creates thousands more political positions, said Jenny Mattingley, a vice president at the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service. 

“Every political administration would probably want to see responsiveness to their policies,” she said. “But with all that swirl and chaos, the people who suffer are the Americans on the ground who need those services.”

Judge Susan Illston from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California said she believes the who sued will be able to prove the government’s actions are unlawful “as shown by the haphazard way in which the [reductions in force] have rolled out” and that they “are intended for the purpose of political retribution.” 

Illston, who temporarily blocked the layoffs on Oct. 15, said she was moved by some of the written statements from laid-off employees. 

“Although we are here talking about statutes and administrative procedure,” she said, “we are also talking about human lives, and these human lives are being dramatically affected by the activities that we’re discussing.”

Her injunction means the staff must return to work once the government shutdown ends. 

Education Secretary Linda McMahon cut 465 positions, including 132 in the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, 137 in the Office for Civil Rights and 121 in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services. Madi Biedermann, a spokeswoman for the department, had no comment on the judge’s ruling and referred ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ to McMahon’s earlier calling the department “unnecessary.” 

At Tuesday’s hearing, Michael Velchik, a Department of Justice attorney, argued that the government had the right to lay off employees because Congress hasn’t approved a budget for the current fiscal year.

​​”If you don’t have money coming in, you should be looking for ways to cut costs,” he said.  

But attorney Danielle Leonard, representing the employee unions, disagreed.

“What counsel is arguing is that if Congress lets government funding lapse for one day, the president can fire the entire federal government,” she said. “That is absurd.”

The cuts were the Trump administration’s latest move toward eliminating an agency that it argues should never have existed in the first place. McMahon acknowledges that Congress has the final word on whether the department shuts down, but so far, members have taken no action on a proposal that is likely to fail in the Senate. Two weeks into the government shutdown, the cuts, saying that money was still flowing to the states, and some conservatives argue advocates have overreacted to the layoffs. In a commentary, the American Enterprise Institute’s Rick Hess said the department for a smooth launch of this year’s financial aid form. But even he questioned the latest cuts, calling them “opaque, severe and lacking in any kind of clear justification.” 

In their complaint, the unions said staff faced “political discrimination,” and even President Donald Trump has called the layoffs an effort to eliminate “Democrat programs.” 

But in filed Friday, Jacqueline Clay, chief human capital officer at the department, said officials didn’t “target employees based on their political viewpoints,” but considered other factors including a shortage of funds.

‘Risks of harm’

Last week, over 60 organizations asked the Senate education committee to hold an oversight hearing into the administration’s actions, which they said have caused “unnecessary chaos” and “create immediate risks of harm to every qualifying individual with a disability and their family.” 

On Monday, also called on Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, to reverse the layoffs.

Some worry that gutting the elementary and secondary office could mean a lack of sufficient oversight of Title I, the largest federal education program. The $18 billion fund is intended to support schools serving low-income students, with the level of funding schools receive based on a set of complicated formulas. 

Without federal staff, there’s a greater risk that states might distribute the funds incorrectly, said Victoria Rosenboom, one of the four staff members who handles those Title I calculations each year. McMahon placed all four on administrative leave. 

“Without us to monitor, the states might monitor less themselves,” Rosenboom said. Her team also gathers data from the Census Bureau every year to determine poverty levels. While there’s still someone in the budget office who can allocate the funds, she said, “they don’t do any of the data collection work. The data quality is all done by us.” 

Others warn of a return to the days when states improperly used Title I funds for construction projects or replaced state dollars with federal funds. 

“There were no limits on the imagination of schools in terms of how they would spend their money, and there were some pretty egregious expenditures,” said Dianne Piche, a former civil rights attorney at the department who is now retired.  

In the early days after the law passed, a from advocates pointed to districts “wasting millions of dollars” on purchases such as a Baptist church building in Detroit, 18 portable swimming pools in Memphis and equipment, including a deep fryer, adding machines and a piano, in one Mississippi county. 

Vought wrote the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a vision for the Trump administration that argued for turning Title I into a block grant. While McMahon’s budget proposal didn’t go that far, she’s currently considering a waiver request from Iowa to roll Title I and other federal funds into a block grant. Indiana submitted a similar proposal, but it excludes Title I. 

Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos proposed during the first Trump administration, but the plan then was to “keep the department functioning,” said Rosenboom, who joined the department in 2019. “At that time, there was still some unease about our future, but definitely not to the same degree as with this administration.”

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 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 over the freeze, arguing that the administration’s actions were harming schools. School districts, parents, unions and nonprofits filed a 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. 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 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 , pulling back $9 billion in funds from public television and foreign aid.

On Monday, the Trump administration will release $1.3 billion in federal funds for summer and afterschool programs that it’s been holding back since July 1, the Office for Management and Budget  education advocates on Friday. That leaves $5.5 billion for teaching positions and training, migrant programs, English learners and adult education still frozen.

The move comes after  joined Democrats in pressuring OMB Director Russ Vought to release the funds. Lara Wade, spokeswoman for AASA, told ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ that having hundreds of superintendents on Capitol Hill last week meeting with members of Congress also “could have been a motivating force.”

But Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, ranking member of the appropriations committee, said releasing just a portion of the funds isn’t good enough. â€œEvery penny of this funding must flow immediately,” she said in a statement.

On Thursday, she blocked the fast-track consideration of a Trump administration nominee over the issue. Mary Christina Riley, nominated to serve as assistant secretary for legislation and congressional affairs at the Education Department, will now have to get through the education committee before the Senate votes on her confirmation.

Democratic-led states the Trump administration Monday over its freeze of nearly $7 billion in education funds, saying the delay has already “irreparably harmed” critical academic and extracurricular programs. 

For two weeks, the White House Office of Management and Budget has been conducting what it calls a “programmatic review” of funds for English learners, migrant programs, teacher training and afterschool programs — money it claims has been “grossly misused to subsidize a radical left-wing agenda.”

“President Trump seems comfortable risking the academic success of a generation to further his own misguided political agenda,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in . “But as with so many of his other actions, this funding freeze is blatantly illegal, and we’re confident the court will agree.”

Blue state leaders aren’t the only ones feeling the pinch. In a summer camp for 300 students was cut short, while an Ohio nonprofit says it will have to cancel afterschool programs this fall if the funds aren’t released. 

Georgia state Superintendent called releasing the funds a matter of fiscal responsibility. “In Georgia, we’re getting ready to start the school year, so I call on federal funds to be released so we can ensure the success of our students,” Eric Mackey, the Alabama state superintendent, said he was caught off guard by what he called a Losing the money, he told a local reporter, would be “a real problem for us.” 

Neither OMB nor the Education Department responded to requests for comment.

The lawsuit dropped the same day the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the administration can proceed with firing roughly half of the Education Department’s staff, further adding to the chaos districts have felt since January. The delay has been one more jolt from an administration that’s been quick to withdraw funding that the Republican-led Congress already approved. These particular funds are part of the fiscal year 2025 budget that President Donald Trump signed in March. 

“We were looking really good, and then you get something like this,” said Gordon Klasna, executive director of secondary education for the Billings Public Schools, Montana’s largest district. He’s wondering how to pay for the nine teachers who keep elementary class sizes capped at 22 students. Without them, classes would grow to 28 students, which, Klansa said, “can be substantial when you have lots of kids who are behind.”

With a new resettlement office that opened last year, the city has seen an influx of refugees. The roughly $30,000 the district normally receives for English learners helps pay for curriculum and translation services — not just for immigrants, but also for Native American students and families, some of whom still speak an indigenous language at home. 

‘No idea it was coming’

shared similar stories on Capitol Hill last week during an to Washington, where many members of Congress said they were also blindsided by the freeze.

“The offices I visited with had no idea it was coming and were wondering what other people had heard,” said David Law, superintendent of the Minnetonka Public Schools in Minnesota and president of AASA, the School Superintendents Association.

Their stories prompted Democrats in both the and to put more pressure on OMB Director Russ Vought and Education Secretary Linda McMahon to free up the funds. In a letter, senators said they were “shocked by the continued lack of respect for states and local schools evidenced by this latest action.”

OMB pointed to a few examples of programs it alleged conflict with the administration’s priorities, including one in Washington state that it said “used funds to direct illegal immigrants toward scholarships intended for American students.” 

Sammi Payne, a management analyst with the Washington state education department, said officials aren’t sure which program OMB is referring to, but it could be the . Established in 1972, the program, which under both Democratic and Republican administrations, provides counseling, tutoring and housing assistance to migrant students during their first year of college.

“Our management and implementation of this funding is consistent with the law,” Superintendent Chris Reykdal said in a statement. “American prosperity has always been a function of embracing immigrants and lifting up those who need additional support to access education and opportunity.” 

‘Can’t write enough grants’

A few states have stepped in to provide short-term support during the pause. Just as an Alabama nonprofit was about to cancel an afterschool program for this fall, the state education department provided some funds left over from the previous year. 

“Our programs are the only option for our children and our working families,” said Andrea Bridges, executive director of the , which serves a rural, high-poverty community about 30 minutes outside Huntsville. Federal 21st Century Community Learning Centers funds support services at three schools. “I can’t write enough grants to come up with $700,000. I could do babysitting, but that’s not what these programs are.” 

Students in the program receive academic support, work on a lot of STEM projects and learn to play musical instruments. But they also focus on college and workforce readiness. She’s watched the graduation rate climb from about 64%, when the nonprofit launched the program 25 years ago, to over 90%. 

“When I say these funds are essential, that’s what I’m talking about,” she said. “It changes the socioeconomic status of the whole community. Everybody wins when kids graduate from high school.”

Verlena Stewart, director of Community Building Institute in Middleton, Ohio, north of Cincinnati, also relies on federal funds to run afterschool and summer learning programs. She was about to shut the summer camp down two weeks early when the Middleton city manager called her and said, “Come pick up a check for $60,000,” she said.

That will get the camp for about 100 students through July 25 and means kids will still get to go on field trips to a movie and Jungle Jim’s, a massive international market and shopping destination. But if the funds aren’t reinstated, the nonprofit won’t be able to offer its afterschool program this fall. 

The center, she said, would keep its doors open for “less formal recreation,” but would have to recruit volunteers to help students with reading and math. 

‘Unfunded mandate’

The White House may no longer want to fund education for English learners and migrant students, but districts are still legally obligated to provide language support, whether they have the funds or not, said Tara Thomas, government affairs manager, for AASA. The requires states to report students’ progress toward mastering English as well as their performance in math, reading and science.

“By cutting off these funds, you’re just expanding the unfunded mandate on schools,” Thomas said. Districts, she said, factored the federal money into their budgets months ago.

In Wyoming, Chase Christensen, superintendent and principal of the one-school Sheridan County School District, was expecting more than $15,000 to give teachers a second year of training in a new math curriculum. Now, he may have to find another way to pay the consultants providing the training.

He doesn’t want to drop non-academic programs either. He was about to shut down a jiu jitsu program that costs about $20,000. But students love it, and he thinks it builds confidence and “sticktoitiveness” that helps them academically.

“It’s just amazing watching kindergarteners do their takedowns. It’s the only time in my career that I’ve had kids get black eyes at school, and I’m not getting calls from their parents about what happened,” he said. “I’m going to do everything I can to keep it going.”

Less than a day later, Trump appeared to rescind the Office of Management and Budget that set the funding “pause” in motion.

But just 30 minutes after that, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt to …rescind the rescission. “This is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze,” she posted. “It is simply a rescission of the OMB memo.”

She described her post as an attempt to “end the confusion.”

It didn’t.

“For an administration that wants to make the argument that public education is dysfunctional and not serving our students well, they are amplifying and contributing to that narrative,” said Amy Loyd, CEO of All4Ed, a policy and advocacy organization. Until last October, she served in the Department of Education as assistant secretary for the Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education.

For now, it’s unclear which programs will be affected as the new administration takes stock of spending it deems wasteful or contrary to the president’s agenda. Those goals include freeing up funds for , ending “wokeness” and passing a tax cut package. Start-up funds for charter schools, school lunches, funding for homeless students and hundreds of other federal grants “will be reviewed by department leadership for alignment with Trump administration priorities,” said education department spokeswoman Madison Biederman. 

OMB said it spared major “formula” grants, like Title I for low-income students, special education funding and Impact Aid to districts serving military families. While the administration said Head Start wouldn’t be impacted, the preschool program among thousands to be reviewed.

The administration originally gave agencies until Feb. 7 to identify grants that advance, among other things, “Marxist equity, transgenderism and green new deal social engineering policies.” Over several chaotic hours, district leaders and advocates tried to interpret whether their programs would be cut while coming to terms with the enormity of the president’s actions.

“This is more than a typical partisan divide,” said Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center. “This is an unusual and unprecedented power grab and every member of Congress should be concerned.”

Challenging the administration’s pause on funding Congress had already appropriated, three associations sued Tuesday, asking for a temporary restraining order “to maintain the status quo.” Just before 5 p.m., as the freeze was about to start, U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan granted the request, noting the “specter of irreparable harm.”

Afterschool programs, food banks and organizations that arrange for children to be driven to cancer treatment centers are among those that would be impacted, said Rick Cohen, a spokesman for the National Council of Nonprofits, one of the groups that filed . Another plaintiff, Main Street Alliance, a network of small businesses, said its members include child care centers that serve low-income families using federal assistance so they can work. 

‘Grave situation’

For many leaders, Tuesday was a rollercoaster.

Just after lunch, Marvin Connelly, superintendent of the Cumberland County Schools in North Carolina, was trying to figure out how he’d handle a potential freeze on over $2 million in Impact Aid — funds that help make up for lost property tax revenue when there’s a nearby military installation. A high-poverty district, Cumberland schools serve over 8,000 children of active service members stationed at Fort Liberty.

“We could really be in a grave situation,” he said. Less than two hours later, he learned the funds would not be affected.

Meanwhile Barbara Duffield, executive director of SchoolHouse Connection, which supports homeless students, was participating on a panel at a conference in Washington when some nonprofit leaders told her they were unable to access federal funds for homeless youth and families.

‘Layers of ˛úłÜ°ůąđ˛šłÜłŚ°ů˛šłŚ˛â’

The effort to pause funding followed the president’s first-day that prohibits federal spending on diversity, equity and inclusion. On Thursday, the administration hundreds of guidance documents, reports and training materials related to DEI and put staff members focusing on equity within the department on leave.

“Who knew dismantling could happen this quickly?” Ian Rowe, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and the founder of a network of charter schools, told ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ. “If these moves put America on a path to becoming a colorblind society, that is a very good thing.”

Many conservatives argue such programs amount to a form of illegal discrimination and waste money. Neera Deshpande, a policy analyst at the Independent Women’s Forum, pointed to that shows the Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia spent $6.4 million to staff its equity office.

“What is that money accomplishing besides adding layers of bureaucracy to the school system, burdening teachers, and taking away time and money from schools that could be used for instructional purposes or even extracurricular activities for students?” she asked. “Every dollar that is allocated toward DEI is a dollar that’s not allocated toward … teacher salaries or arts programs or literacy support or sports.”

The reversal in priorities at the federal level has left some nonprofit leaders in a bind. When former President Joe Biden was in office, the director of a teacher apprenticeship initiative applied for a Department of Labor grant to help recruit a diverse pool of potential teachers. Now, he doesn’t know whether that emphasis will hurt his application.

“I hope they can strike a balance with sanity here,” said the man, who asked not to be named to keep from jeopardizing the grant. “I’m not going to talk about the diversity part, but we still have a significant crisis in the teacher pipeline. We have to attract individuals into this profession.”

‘Top-down review’

With more than targeted for potential review, it’s unclear which might ultimately be left on the chopping block.

But at least one Republican said the National School Lunch Program shouldn’t be off limits. On , Georgia GOP Rep. Rich McCormick suggested low-income students shouldn’t depend on schools for meals. The program, which costs roughly $17 billion, provides free and reduced-price meals for over 28 million children during the school year and extends services through the summer with the help of parks, recreation centers and other community organizations.

“You’re telling me that kids who stay at home instead of going to work at Burger King, McDonald’s, during the summer, should stay at home and get their free lunch instead of going to work?” he asked. “I think we need to have a top-down review.”

Other advocates noted that while federal funds make up only about 10% of a district’s operating budget, some school systems rely on those dollars more than others. In 2023, AASA, the School Superintendents Association, created showing that overall, federal funds account for a larger share of district budgets in GOP-led states, mainly those in the South and West.

“Any conversation about federal funding levels — whether a cut in overall level or a proposal to freeze access — requires us to be very honest about the role of federal dollars in local school districts, and to be candid about the facts of who … is more reliant on federal dollars,” said Noelle Ellerson Ng, associate executive director for advocacy governance at AASA.

Responding to news reports that the president had rescinded the freeze memo, Leavitt, the press secretary, posted that the president’s executive orders nonetheless “remain in full force and effect.” 

Ng doesn’t know where that leaves the nation’s schools, but she’s run out of patience. Regarding Leavitt’s post, she asked, “Did it attempt to end confusion, or add a layer for today?”