The U.S. Department of Education won’t cut loose more than a thousand employees next week, as originally planned in its March reduction in force, but the affected staff have not yet returned to work, according to an email sent out to the employees Friday.
The message is the latest, but most significant, step the agency has taken to date to comply with a federal judge’s order last month that directed the department to reinstate the staff it shed through layoffs. Laid-off staff were initially placed on administrative leave, during which they’ve received pay and benefits. That leave period was scheduled to last through June 9.
While the agency takes steps to comply with the May 22 order, the Trump administration is continuing the legal fight to proceed with the layoffs. Also on Friday, the administration filed an emergency appeal, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down the lower court’s order.
In a Friday afternoon message to laid-off staff obtained by Education Week, the department’s human resources officer, Jacqueline Clay, told employees who have been on administrative leave for nearly three months that they would no longer be let go early next week as planned.
“We are actively assessing how to reintegrate you back to the office in the most seamless way possible,” Clay wrote. “This includes evaluating necessary updates to security access, technology, and workspaces to ensure full operability.”
The message offered no timeline for returning the employees to work, but asked staff to share “current outside employment or offers they have accepted since the [reduction in force] notification” to help the department develop “potential reentry timelines.”
“We understand that circumstances may have changed during this period, and this request is made solely to support a smooth return to duty,” Clay wrote, adding it would not affect employment status.
The email follows the creation of a committee within the department that has begun to analyze how it would bring back approximately 1,400 laid-off eemployees.
Since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, the agency has shed about half its staff—which stood at more than 4,100 as of Jan. 20—through the dismissal of probationary employees, buyout and early resignation offers, and the mass layoff announced March 11. The administration has also reduced its office space in that time, potentially presenting an obstacle to bringing employees back.
The layoffs were followed by an executive order from Trump on March 20 directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “facilitate” the closure of the agency.
The actions drew swift blowback from Democrats and many education groups. Lawsuits filed in response have argued that the reduction in force—a “first step” in dismantling the federal agency, McMahon has said previously—was so significant it made it impossible for the department to carry out its congressionally mandated responsibilities, such as civil rights investigations or research and data collection.
The May 22 order from Massachusetts-based Judge Myong Joun came in response to two of those lawsuits. He blocked the executive order and any pending moves to transfer Education Department responsibilities to other agencies, and ordered the reinstatement of terminated employees.
Joun’s injunction has loomed large in the past week, with lawmakers asking McMahon during hearings on the president’s proposed budget whether she would comply. She said she would.
But the president’s administration has previously skirted following court orders on similar matters, and has prevailed in a number of appeals—including at the Supreme Court—to overturn lower-court rulings.
The Trump administration appealed Joun’s order to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, which denied the administration’s request to block it, prompting Trump’s Friday appeal to the Supreme Court.
