New lawsuit aims to stop Trump’s dismantling of Education Department

Progressive legal advocacy group Democracy Forward has filed a new lawsuit against President Donald Trump and his administration over their efforts to dismantle the federal Department of Education.

The organization filed the lawsuit March 24 in a Massachusetts federal court on behalf of a coalition of school districts, educators and their unions, Democracy Forward announced in a press release.

“Today, we defend all people who depend on the Department of Education to ensure public schools are safe, accessible and welcoming, and that education is available to all people in this nation, not just a few,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said in a news release. “This country needs to be focused on how to improve education and opportunities for all and how to support those who both give and receive education with safe, effective, accessible, and quality schools and opportunities. Yet, instead of doing that, Donald Trump is taking a wrecking ball to our nation’s best values and our chance at a better future. We are honored to represent students, educators, schools, and communities across the nation in court to stop this abuse of power.” 

The plaintiffs in the case are a pair of Massachusetts school districts, the American Federation of Teachers of Massachusetts, the national AFT, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 93, the American Association of University Professors, and the Service Employees International Union.

The lawsuit comes in response to Trump’s March 20 executive order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education.”

Trump can’t legally abolish the Department of Education, which was created during the administration of President Jimmy Carter in 1979 and has been operational since 1980, without an act of Congress. Republicans are not likely to get the 60 votes in the Senate required to overcome a Democratic filibuster, barring a change to the rules. 

The administration on March 11 announced a round of layoffs at the Department of Education, which the federal agency said will result in the layoffs of more than 2,000 people, or about half of its workers.

“In addition to the harm the mass firings will cause, the case filed today raises important constitutional issues,” Democracy Forward said in its announcement. “For the past 46 years, Congress has consistently appropriated funds for the Department to provide services to students, parents, schools, states, colleges, and more, and has repeatedly passed laws requiring the Department to perform a host of functions.”

Democratic state officials have decried the Trump administration’s plans to shutter the Department of Education. Eliminating the agency was a central Trump campaign pledge in 2024 and a key part of the Republican blueprint for a new presidential administration known as Project 2025.

“We have both a moral and legal responsibility to ensure that every student receives a high-quality education, regardless of their background or circumstances,” Wisconsin State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jill Underly said in a statement in early March. “Any efforts to undermine the hard work and commitment of our educators are nothing more than attempts to sow fear and impose political ideologies on the education of our children.”

The elimination of the Department of Education would put an end to its enforcement, through its Office for Civil Rights, of protections against discrimination in schools, experts say, and end a major source of funding for schools nationwide. State and local governments largely fund K-12 education, but the federal agency allocates billions of dollars as well, including $18.6 billion in grants to disadvantaged schools and $14.1 million in grants for special education in the Biden administration’s final budget.

“The Department of Education, and the laws it is supposed to execute, has one major purpose: to fill opportunity gaps to help every child in America succeed,” American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said in Democracy Forward’s announcement. “That’s what the ‘equal access’ provided for in the statute means. And over the last five decades, Congress has fulfilled this mission to help poor kids, kids with disabilities, first generation college kids, kids who want to work in a trade, and 45 million Americans with student debt. Now, wielding a sledgehammer, this president is destroying that promise for this and future generations.”