On Thursday, a federal judge in Maryland affirmed a Department of Education (DOE) order to reduce a particular set of employees, giving the Trump administration a significant win.
U.S. District Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher, who was first nominated by Barack Obama and later appointed by President Donald Trump, denied attempts to temporarily halt mass layoffs at the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) in a 13-page memorandum opinion.
Due to a “reduction-in-force” (RIF) that eliminated 90% of the IES’s workforce, two professional bodies that represent educational researchers filed a lawsuit against the DOE in early April. The plaintiffs also criticised what they called “a thoughtless and sweeping cancellation of contracts” funding “intensive studies” on various educational approaches and “data collection and dissemination” in the 47-page case.
The plaintiffs filed a motion for injunctive relief in late April, asking the court to overturn the RIF, reinstate the cancelled contracts, rehire the dismissed employees, and prevent the government from erasing any of the data that the IES had previously gathered.
“The record in this case underscores that it is poorly suited for preliminary relief,” the court stated in its denial of the injunction motion.
“In asking this Court to order the government to reinstate a large number of employees without any information about which employees performed critical statutory functions and which did not, Plaintiffs again seek an overbroad mandatory injunction,” Gallagher stated. “Plaintiffs have not shown they have standing to seek that relief.”
The plaintiffs claimed they had organisational, or associational, standing in a memorandum defending the injunction request. This is a somewhat favoured notion under current U.S. Supreme Court doctrine, which frequently faces challenges from the government.
According to the 53-page letter, “plaintiffs are membership associations of education researchers.” “The destruction of IES has caused and continues to cause these researchers countless harms.”
For its part, the government cited the elements necessary to uphold the organisational theory of standing in a 31-page memorandum of law in opposition, arguing that the plaintiffs had not provided specific facts that at least one of their identified members had suffered or would suffer actual or imminent and concrete harm.
The government’s petition contended that the plaintiffs’ theory of standing amounted to a series of contract cancellations and reductions-in-force that the plaintiffs claim will hinder the Department’s ability to provide the information that the plaintiffs’ members require. “That alone does not grant standing.”
The Trump administration’s win here represents the most recent application of a judicial strategy that is by now well-known: dismissing a plaintiff’s claims based on the analytical framework that legal academics often refer to as “conservative standing doctrine.”
Conservative judges who aimed to limit the scope and application of constitutional remedies developed this legal philosophy in two instances from the 1920s. Stated differently, the purpose of standing doctrine was to restrict lawsuits against the government, and it has been refined and upheld over time.
Although standing arguments are technically procedural, they are typically fact-intensive rather than depending on the underlying merits arguments in a disagreement.
However, the plaintiffs have not demonstrated enough serious harm to justify a preliminary injunction, the court makes clear.
Gallagher maintained that the investigation has not yet focused on the case’s merits, that the case’s record is inadequate, and that she thinks the plaintiffs may have a chance in the future.
“Plaintiffs seem to be right that, today, IES is not doing a number of tasks Congress requires of it,” according to the opinion. “And they may well be right that IES is unlikely to fulfill many of its statutory functions in the future. The Court likewise takes Plaintiffs at their word that not receiving data they expected to receive will harm them.”
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The plaintiff’s claims, which are based on a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), a federal statute that governs agency activities and specifies how to contest them in court, have not been persuasive thus far, the judge argues.
The plaintiff’s claims, which are based on a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), a federal statute that governs agency activities and specifies how to contest them in court, have not been persuasive thus far, the judge argues.
“Plaintiffs ask this Court to act as indiscriminately as they claim the government did when terminating the contracts,” as per the opinion. “APA relief must be drawn by scalpel, not battering ram.”
Gallagher nevertheless goes to considerable measures to convey to the parties her serious concerns regarding DOE’s reorganisation of IES.
Gallagher told the government and the groups to work together on a briefing schedule and provide it to the court by June 19, citing a feeling of “some urgency” in the issue.
