CNN
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A new lawsuit from Democratic attorneys general in 20 states and the District of Columbia alleges this week’s mass layoffs at the Department of Education are gutting the agency as a way to implement an unlawful plan by President Donald Trump to dismantle the department.
The states accuse the administration of “effectively nullifying” mandates by Congress that require the department to carry out certain functions.
“Here, where Congress has created the Department of Education, the Executive and his agencies cannot incapacitate it, absent Congressional action that directs them to do so,” the lawsuit said.
On Tuesday, the administration announced that it was cutting nearly half of the Department’s staff, with roughly 1,300 employees notified this week that they would be terminated in 90 days.
The attorneys general say that with the layoffs, the administration is severely handicapping Department of Education offices created explicitly by Congress, including the Office of Civil Rights, which is losing the majority of its staff, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit highlighted other offices that they work closely with on education issues that were being “effectively eliminated” with the so-called Reduction in Force. The effects are already being felt, the attorneys general said, alleging that an online system for grant distribution was inaccessible in the wake of the RIF announcement.
“The effective gutting of the Department of Education will result in a wide range of devastating harms for Plaintiff States and their residents that could be neither prevented nor mitigated,” the lawsuit, filed in Massachusetts federal court on Thursday, said.
The Department of Education did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.
Earlier this week, several attorneys general in a separate lawsuit against the administration won a court order pausing a Trump plan to end grant funding aim at addressing teacher shortages at K-12 schools.
