Federal District Judge Myong Joun (District of Massachusetts) has issued a preliminary injunction requiring the Trump administration to desist from its moves to dismantle the Department of Education. Fair enough; the Department was created by Congress, the administration can jawbone for its elimination, but only Congress can do so.
Unfortunately, the judge didn’t stop there. He also ordered DoEd to rehire those employees who’d been RIFed as excess to the Department’s needs.
Not only is there no evidence that defendants are pursuing a “legislative goal” or otherwise working with Congress to reach a resolution, but there is also no evidence that the [reduction in force] has actually made the Department more efficient[.]
Judges don’t get to dictate the purpose of agency/Department heads’ firings of employees. RIFs have as their purpose the removal of unneeded employees—the essence of making any government agency more efficient.
Joun gave the lie to his employment ruling by his decision to not say how the RIFs reduced Department efficiency. He simply wholesale-ly accepted the plaintiffs’ (a group of states, school districts, non-profit organizations, and labor unions) claims regarding efficiency and coupled that with his blithe, unsubstantiated rejection of the government’s position.
It gets worse. Joun wrote in his opening
Defendants do acknowledge, as they must, that the Department cannot be shut down without Congress’s approval, yet they simultaneously claim that their legislative goals (obtaining Congressional approval to shut down the Department) are distinct from their administrative goals (improving efficiency). There is nothing in the record to support these contradictory positions.
Even logic doesn’t seem to matter. There’s nothing contradictory in DoEd Secretary Linda McMahon both working with Congress to eliminate the Department while simultaneously working to make the Department more efficient—which she must do while the Department remains in existence.
Beyond that, judges do not get to dictate to a coequal and separate branch what that branch’s employment practices must be. The judge’s role in the present case, his sole legitimate role under our Constitution and his oath of office, is to adjudicate whether these firings comport themselves with statute and with our Constitution.
Activist judges, judges who go beyond that limit, are violating their oaths of office; from that they are not hold[ing] their Offices during good Behavior. That is an impeachable offense.
This one would have been fine, if on disagreeable ground, had he stopped with his order to stop dismantling DoEd. His meddling in Executive Branch employment decisions has gone too far.
Full stop.
Joun’s injunction can be read here.