WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday allowed the Trump administration to terminate Education Department grants for teacher training that officials deemed to violate their new policy opposing diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
The 5-4 decision blocks a Massachusetts-based judge’s ruling that said the administration had failed to follow the correct legal process in terminating the grants. About $65 million in grant payments are outstanding.
The decision is the first win for President Donald Trump at the Supreme Court in his second term.
Five of the court’s conservatives were in the majority, while Chief Justice John Roberts joined the three liberals in dissent.
The unsigned decision said that the district court judge did not have authority to order that the funds be paid under a federal law called the Administrative Procedure Act.
The administration “compellingly argues” that the entities receiving the funds will not suffer irreparable harm as a result of the funds being withheld, the decision said.
In a dissenting opinion, liberal Justice Elena Kagan disputed that conclusion, saying that the grant recipients had said they would be forced to cancel some of their programs.
“Nowhere in its papers does the government defend the legality of canceling the education grants at issue here,” she added.
“It is beyond puzzling that a majority of justices conceive of the government’s application as an emergency,” liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said in a separate opinion.
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The 104 grants at issue had been awarded under two different programs, the Teacher Quality Partnership and another called Supporting Effective Educator Development.
The Department of Education in February found that the grants violated Trump’s executive order that the administration eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs that are traditionally aimed in part at ensuring that people from historically marginalized groups can obtain equal opportunities to advance their careers.
Administration officials said the funded programs “promote or take part in DEI initiatives or other initiatives that unlawfully discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, or another protected characteristic.”
In court papers, acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris said many of the programs contained “objectionable DEI material.”
A lawsuit was filed in March by eight states including California, Massachusetts and New York — on behalf of entities that receive the grants, such as universities and nonprofits — saying the decision to rescind the awards violated a federal law called the Administrative Procedure Act.
U.S. District Judge Myong Joun issued a temporary restraining order blocking the administration’s move, saying officials had failed to properly explain their reasoning.
The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to block Joun’s ruling, noting that the Education Department had sent the same boilerplate letter to all of the grant awardees announcing the termination of funding. The letters contained no specific information on why any particular program was deemed to be in violation of the anti-DEI policy, the appeals court said.
The case only involves grants issued to entities in the states that sued. In total, the Department of Education canceled about $600 million in grants for teacher training.
Trump last month signed an executive order that seeks to dismantle the Education Department. Completely eliminating the department, however, would require congressional approval.
In two prior emergency applications filed by the Trump administration, the Supreme Court did not grant its requests.
In one, the court rejected the administration’s bid to avoid immediately paying contractors for the U.S. Agency for International Development whose funding was cut.
In the other, the court sidestepped a decision on whether Trump could fire a federal government watchdog, although as a result of a lower court decision, the administration ultimately prevailed.
