It is equally sure -- that that is what Tangerine and McMahon (nominally the Sec'y. of Education) are striving (impotently, it turns out) to achieve. Here's the fine 88 page opinion, just docketed -- and a bit:
. . .Congress established the Department of Education -- along with many of its offices -- by statute through the enactment of the Department of Education Organization Act (“DEOA”). [Doc. No. 1 at ¶ 46]; see 20 U.S.C. §§ 3401–3510. Creating the Department allowed Congress to streamline federal support for education, consolidating programs that were dispersed across several departments “into a single Cabinet-level department.” [25-cv-10677 Doc. No. 1 at ¶ 11]. While the primary responsibility for funding and creating policy for elementary and secondary education lies with the States, the Department is responsible “for administering federal elementary, secondary, and postsecondary education programs.” [25-cv-10601 Doc. No. 1 at ¶ 47 (quoting Rebecca R. Skinner et al., A Summary of Federal Education Laws Administered by the U.S. Department of Education (2024))]. . . .
Consolidated Plaintiffs meet both the fitness and the hardship prongs. The issues are fit for judicial review because the claims at issue do not involve uncertain or contingent events. Consolidated Plaintiffs’ claims are not based on an actual closure of the Department, but on the effective incapacitation of the Department to carry out congressionally mandated functions through the guise of what Defendants argue is a “reorganization.” See [Doc. No. 95 at 13, 14, 19, 25, 28].
Defendants [McMahon, and Trump] cannot have it both ways. While repeatedly referring to the mass terminations as merely a “reorganization” not ripe for judicial review, Defendants simultaneously sidestep that the mass terminations were explicitly implemented to shut down the Department. Section 2 of the Executive Order is titled, “Closing the Department of Education and Returning Authority to the States,” and clearly directs the Secretary to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education.”10 See [Doc. No. 71-1]; see also [Doc. No. 71-9 (Reporting on President Trump’s “desire to do away with the department entirely,” his hope that “Ms. McMahon would effectively put herself out of a job,” and his desire “to close [the Department] immediately”)].
As explained in further detail with relevance to the parties’ standing and irreparable harm arguments, the Consolidated Plaintiffs have demonstrated that this is a case “in which the impact of the [terminations] upon the petitioners is sufficiently direct and immediate as to render the issue appropriate for judicial review at this stage.” Abbott, 387 U.S. at 152; see id. at 153 (“Where the legal issue presented is fit for judicial resolution, and where a regulation requires an immediate and significant change in the plaintiffs’ conduct of their affairs with serious penalties attached to noncompliance, access to the courts under the Administrative Procedure Act and the Declaratory Judgment Act must be permitted, absent a statutory bar or some other unusual circumstance, neither of which appears here”).
A department without enough employees to perform statutorily mandated functions is not a department at all. This court cannot be asked to cover its eyes while the Department’s employees are continuously fired and units are transferred out until the Department becomes a shell of itself. . . .
Now you know. Busy day, on the public federal dockets -- and decidedly great news! Appeals will of course be forthcoming -- but for now, the WWF wife. . . is DOA; kaput.
नमस्ते
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