Overview

• The Supreme Court’s emergency order overturned a Boston judge’s injunction and authorized the dismissal of nearly 1,400 Education Department employees.
• The administration plans to cut roughly one-third of the department’s more than 4,100 staff this year with an eventual goal of halving its workforce.
• Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan dissented from the decision, which passed along conservative-majority lines.
• A coalition of Democratic attorneys general, school districts and teachers unions contends that the staff reductions will jeopardize student aid distribution, civil rights enforcement and national data collection.
• The White House maintains that the president holds ultimate authority to reorganize executive agencies; legal challenges over the constitutionality of dismantling a cabinet department without Congress are ongoing.