A coalition of 21 Democratic attorneys general sued the Trump administration on Thursday, two days after the Education Department fired more than 1,300 workers, purging people who administer grants and track student achievement across America.
The group, led by New York’s Letitia James, sued the administration in a Massachusetts federal court, saying that the dismissals were “illegal and unconstitutional.”
“Firing half of the Department of Education’s work force will hurt students throughout New York and the nation, especially low-income students and those with disabilities who rely on federal funding,” Ms. James said in a news release. “This outrageous effort to leave students behind and deprive them of a quality education is reckless and illegal.”
The cuts to the department’s staff will cause a delay in “nearly every aspect” of the K-12 education in their states, the attorneys general said in their suit. Therefore, the coalition is seeking a court order to stop what it called “policies to dismantle” the agency, arguing that the layoffs are just a first step toward its destruction.
“All of President Trump’s executive actions are lawful, constitutional and intended to deliver on the promises he made to the American people,” a White House spokesman, Harrison Fields, said. “Partisan elected officials and judicial activists who seek to legally obstruct President Trump’s agenda are defying the will of 77 million Americans who overwhelmingly re-elected President Trump, and their efforts will fail.”
Linda McMahon, the education secretary, has said that the layoffs will help the department deliver services more efficiently and that the changes will not affect student loans, Pell grants or funding for special-needs students.
Thursday’s move was made in concert with the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, Wisconsin, Vermont and the District of Columbia.
“President Trump is not a king, and he cannot unilaterally decide to close a cabinet agency,” said Matthew J. Platkin, New Jersey’s attorney general.
The suit is the most recent legal challenge to Mr. Trump’s fast-moving agenda. At the core of his goals has been a push to slash jobs, programs and funding across the government. To lead the push, Mr. Trump appointed Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, to run a program called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Staffed by Mr. Musk’s young aides, DOGE has bulldozed through federal agencies.
In its 52 days, the Trump administration has dealt crippling blows to several departments, including the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Layoffs have also left thousands of federal workers unemployed and looking for employment in a sluggish job market.
In DOGE’s wake, dozens of lawsuits have been filed, leading to a patchwork of injunctions and court orders opposing many of the cuts. In a separate challenge, Ms. James and a coalition of 19 attorneys general won an injunction banishing DOGE from access to the U.S. Treasury Department’s most sensitive payment and data systems.
The attorneys general argued in their Education Department suit that the executive branch “does not have the legal authority to unilaterally incapacitate or dismantle it without an act of Congress.”
The cuts announced this week would have “devastating effects,” they said. The Education Department serves nearly 18,200 districts and more than 50 million students, attending roughly 98,000 public schools and 32,000 private schools, they said. The department’s funds support programs for special education — both in public and private schools — and students in rural communities.
The move to cut staff members would lead to the “destruction of this critical federal agency that ensures tens of millions of students receive a quality education,” the attorneys general said.
The cuts have been so severe, the suit said, that they have prevented the department from performing duties mandated by the law. Seven regional offices of the department’s Office for Civil Rights have closed entirely, they said.
The civil rights arm of the agency investigates allegations of racial and sex-based discrimination, but a majority of its complaints involve students with disabilities. In New York, the regional civil rights office built up a backlog of discrimination cases after protests erupted on college campuses last year. Its shuttering could leave those cases in limbo.
The government has cast the layoffs at the Education Department, a longtime target of Mr. Trump, as a move to reduce bureaucracy and costs. The cuts would halve the department’s staff.
Ms. McMahon said in a statement that the “reduction in force reflects the Department of Education’s commitment to efficiency, accountability and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents and teachers.”
Trump administration officials have spoken often of their desire to dismantle the entire department, a plan that would require the approval of Congress and would probably trigger fresh lawsuits.
John B. King, the chancellor of the State University of New York and a former federal education secretary under President Barack Obama, said in a recent television interview that such a move would harm young people.
“It would be terrible,” Mr. King said.
In their filing on Thursday, the attorneys general said the Department of Education was essential and that their states relied on the agency for “an extraordinary array of programs.”
Although Congress has granted the secretary the authority to restructure the agency, she is “not permitted to eliminate or disrupt functions required by statute, nor can she transfer the department’s responsibilities to another agency outside of its statutory authorization,” the suit said.
The court should declare the directive from Mr. Trump to cut the agency unconstitutional, they argued.