The Supreme Court’s Monday order allowing the Trump administration to proceed with layoffs at the U.S. Department of Education wasn’t surprising, but was still an emotional blow to employees who lost their jobs and would have been reinstated, as well as some of their former colleagues, they said in interviews.
“This is a hurdle that greatly impacts myself, and those 1,400 people, and the people that we served,” said Rachel Gittleman, who helped respond to loan borrower complaints in the department’s federal student aid office. “But this is not a loss. The fight continues.”
Meanwhile, the 1,400 staff members who received layoff notices will stay on the federal payroll until at least Aug. 1, according to an email the department’s top human resources official sent to staffers shortly after the Supreme Court released its ruling.
Those employees, part of a reduction in force the Trump administration announced in March, have been on administrative leave for the past four months. Their leave was extended after a federal judge in May ordered the Trump administration to reinstate laid-off employees. But the agency never reached the point of returning them to work, while the administration asked the Supreme Court to block the lower court’s order.
With Monday’s order in hand, the department will now proceed with final dismissals, even as the legal challenge continues.
When President Donald Trump took office in January following a campaign in which he pledged to eliminate the Education Department, 4,133 people worked for the agency. Now, fewer than 2,200 remain—a reduction of nearly half.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon called the high court’s ruling a “significant win for students and families.”
“It is a shame that the highest court in the land had to step in to allow President Trump to advance the reforms Americans elected him to deliver using the authorities granted to him by the U.S. Constitution,” she said in a prepared statement.
The department won’t let all staff go immediately
Sheria Smith, president of AFGE 252, the union that represents Education Department staff, urged the agency to reconsider.
“The agency doesn’t have to move forward with this callous act of eliminating services and terminating dedicated workers,” she said in a statement.
But shortly after the Supreme Court’s decision, the Education Department notified staff in an email obtained by Education Week that the agency would continue with its planned reduction in force, and told employees their separation date—originally set for June 10 and later extended—would move to Aug. 1.
“The department appreciates your services and recognizes the difficulty of the moment,” wrote Jacqueline Clay, the agency’s chief human resources officer. “This RIF action is not a reflection upon your performance or conduct and is solely due to agency restructuring.”
The coalition leading the lawsuit against the department that led to the order blocking the layoffs—which includes Democratic state attorneys general, the nation’s second largest teachers’ unions, and two Massachusetts school districts—said in a statement the decision was disappointing.
“We will never stop fighting on behalf of all students and public schools and the protections, services, and resources they need to thrive,” the statement continued.
Employees had ‘a lot of hope’ after initial court win
The Supreme Court has, in recent weeks, sided with the Trump administration in allowing reductions in force at other federal agencies, and previously allowed the Education Department to move ahead with terminating millions of dollars in teacher-training grants.
Still, the May 22 ruling by U.S. District Judge Myong Joun ordering the reinstatement of Education Department staff gave the affected employees hope, Gittleman said. An appeals court later upheld the order after the Trump administration appealed it.
“The injunction, and it being upheld by the First Circuit, was a pretty clear indication that there was enough harm that had been perpetuated by the RIFs that the RIFs needed to stop while the court case worked its way out, which can take years,” she said. “I think there was a lot of hope for the people. I think there was, obviously, a lot of uncertainty, and a lot of anxiety and frustration with that uncertainty. But I think hope was an overarching feeling.”
Following Joun’s ruling, the Trump administration took preliminary steps to restore laid-off staff, but never completed the process while waiting on the Supreme Court’s decision.
In early June, the department extended the administrative leave period for laid-off employees just days before it was set to expire, ensuring they’d continue to collect paychecks while the Supreme Court request was pending.
The agency also said it stopped executing an arrangement with the U.S. Department of Labor to oversee programs run by the Education Department’s office of career, technical, and adult education. And the Education Department said it had put on hold negotiations with the U.S. Department of the Treasury on managing its student loan portfolio.
In addition, court filings documenting these steps describe other moves in response to the court order: convening a committee of department leaders focused on reintegrating laid-off employees; securing temporary office space after the agency consolidated offices following the reduction in force; and surveying dismissed employees on whether they’d secured outside employment since leaving the department and about accommodations and equipment they’d need upon returning to the job.
A separate order from the same judge on June 19 told the Trump administration to restore staff to the Education Department’s office for civil rights. That case is still pending.
Affected employees from that case were told they would be “separately notified of their separation at the appropriate time,” according to Clay’s email.
The loss of employees in that office—which had nearly 600 staff and 12 regional offices before the Trump administration took office, and saw some of the deepest cuts in the March reductions—will be an institutional loss, said Michael Pillera, a former investigator in the office and now the director of the educational opportunities project for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a nonprofit that advocates for racial justice.
“There are a number of staff members who have been waiting and hoping they could return back to their jobs and continue serving the public and serving school communities, ensuring students’ civil rights,” he said. “And as of today that becomes a lot harder.”
In group chats among laid-off employees, people were really distraught about the Supreme Court order, one staff member said.
But in a twist, that staff member—who was among 75 who were placed on administrative leave in the Trump administration’s first weeks due to often tenuous connections to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and has remained on administrative leave ever since—could be headed back to work.
An email sent to those employees last week, obtained by Education Week, asked them to complete a reintegration survey outlining their technology and other logistical needs for returning to work. The staff member estimates she’s among about 55 who are still on administrative leave due to ties to DEI.
“Now I feel like they’re definitely going to bring us back, because they’re actually letting all of these people go,” said the employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “I know, of me and the other people on the admin. leave, none of us wanted to leave, so I’m going to try and stay on the grateful side—that I’m grateful I get to go back to the job I loved.”
The layoffs have left a leaner staff grappling with more work.
McMahon told lawmakers in May that approximately 74 employees had been brought back after the cuts, acknowledging they had “cut a little muscle.”
There isn’t much fat to trim, though, argued Amy Loyd, the CEO of All4Ed, an organization that advocates for students of color and students from low-income families, and a former department official.
“The reality is that this is the death blow to the department, and it’s only going to be able to carry out the most basic skeletal functions, which I suspect will also begin to erode,” she said Monday. “So I’m discouraged by this.”
