The U.S. Supreme Court has cleared the way for President Donald Trump to dismantle the Education Department without congressional approval. The unsigned ruling paves the way for Trump to lay off 1,400 workers at the agency. The court’s three liberal judges dissented.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the decision will “unleash untold harm, delaying or denying educational opportunities and leaving students to suffer from discrimination, sexual assault, and other civil rights violations without the federal resources Congress intended.”
Justice Sotomayor went on to write: “The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naive, but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave.”
In other education news, 24 states and the District of Columbia have sued the Trump administration for freezing nearly $7 billion in previously approved education grants. Part of the funding would have helped schools offer free or low-cost after-school programs and help train and retain teachers.
