Supreme Court allows Trump officials to freeze teacher training grants over DEI

A divided Supreme Court on Friday cleared the way for the Trump administration to at least temporarily freeze up to $65 million in educational grants designed to address teacher shortages, which the government says fund programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion.

The initiatives provide leadership development, teacher residency programs, training and other services. A coalition of Democratic-led states that challenged the funding freeze said it would trigger teacher layoffs and other harm to schools, weakening the teacher pipelines Congress intended to enhance when it created the programs.

A district court judge had blocked the Education Department from canceling over 100 grants that funded two programs – Teacher Quality Partnership and Supporting Effective Educator Development – while litigation challenging the decision continued.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the court’s three liberal justices said they would have denied the administration’s request to immediately intervene in the case, with Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson saying the court should have stayed out of the litigation at this early stage.

Freezing the grant money “will inflict significant harm on grantees – a fact that the Government barely contests. Worse still, the Government does not even deign to defend the lawfulness of its actions,” wrote Jackson, who was joined by Sotomayor.

Trump officials have turned to the Supreme Court multiple times in recent weeks. The justices earlier declined to immediately intervene when Trump fired an independent agency watchdog. They backed a lower court decision requiring the administration to restart certain foreign aid payments.

In this case, educational grant recipients were told in February that their funding would be cut off. The administration said the programs may violate federal civil rights law because they “promote or take part in DEI initiatives or other initiatives that unlawfully discriminate.”

Eight states affected by the cuts, including California, Massachusetts, Maryland and New York, sued to restore the funding, saying Trump officials could not rely on DEI concerns to justify the cuts and had not provided specific reasons for terminating the grants.

In its brief unsigned order Friday, a five-justice majority sided with the administration, saying the government was likely to prevail in part in its claim that district courts do not have jurisdiction to enforce contractual obligations to make payments. Those claims against government should instead by heard by the Court of Federal Claims.

If the states ultimately defeat the funding freeze in court, “they can recover any wrongfully withheld funds through suit in an appropriate forum. And if (the states) instead decline to keep the programs operating, then any ensuing irreparable harm would be of their own making,” said the order from Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

In addition, the majority said a pause on the lower-court order was necessary because the states had not disputed the government’s claim that it is unlikely to recover any grant funds once they are disbursed.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit had upheld the lower-court ruling against the Trump administration, pointing to harm that would come from ending the programs such as staff layoffs and a pause on stipends to currently enrolled teachers.

U.S. District Judge Myong J. Joun said the directive cutting off the teacher funding lacked a reasoned explanation and is likely to be “arbitrary and capricious.” He rejected the administration’s claim that the trial court lacks jurisdiction to review the matter.

The grant programs were created by Congress in 2008 and 2015 in part to “recruit highly qualified individuals, including minorities and individuals from other occupations, into the teaching force.” The grants fund professional development for school officials and partnerships between high-need local schools and colleges and universities, which are required to show that teachers in the program “receive training in providing instruction to diverse populations, including children with disabilities, limited English proficient students, and children from low-income families.”

In her lengthy dissent, Jackson sharply criticized the majority for hastily inserting itself into the litigation before a lower court has issued a more permanent order – a step she characterized as “unprincipled and unfortunate.”

She noted that the grant programs had been authorized by Congress and in effect for more than a decade.

“What is new here is the Department’s insistence that it need not go through the notice and review procedures the agency has traditionally used to terminate grants it has awarded,” Jackson wrote. “Instead, the Department now seeks to terminate the pending grants en masse, through the use of boilerplate language that is not particularized to any grant recipient.”

“The agency’s abruptness leaves one wondering whether any reasoned decisionmaking has occurred with respect to these terminations at all,” she added.

Acting solicitor general Sarah M. Harris told the justices that lower courts are exceeding their authority by ordering the Trump administration to pay for programs that are inconsistent with its interests. In a court filing, she said the programs “send out the door taxpayer money that may never be clawed back. This Court should put a swift end to federal district courts’ unconstitutional reign as self-appointed managers of Executive Branch funding and grant-disbursement decisions.”

State attorneys general who sued to restore the grants said they are seeking targeted relief within the boundaries of their states, where grant recipients provide a pipeline of qualified teachers for local schools.