WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled for the Trump administration on Friday and lifted a judge’s order that had blocked the canceling of $148 million in grants for recruiting and training new teachers in California and millions more nationwide.
By a 5-4 vote, the justices granted the administration’s appeal and freezes the funding for now.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said he would have denied the appeal, and the court’s three liberals — Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson — filed a written dissent.
“In my view, nothing about this case demanded our immediate intervention,” Kagan wrote.
The majority did not explain its decision. In a brief, unsigned order, it said the plaintiffs did not “refute the Government’s representation that it is unlikely to recover the grant funds once they are disbursed.”
Trump administration lawyers had urged the court to rein in judges who were acting as “self-appointed managers” of the federal government.
In early February, Trump’s appointees at the Education Department reviewed pending grants aiming to end funding for “discriminatory practices, including in the form of DEI,” or diversity, equity and inclusion.
They decided to terminate 104 of 109 teacher training grants valued at about $600 million nationwide. They did so through form letters that said the grants “no longer effectuate … agency priorities.”
Led by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, eight Democratic-leaning states filed suit in Boston and argued that Congress had approved the grants and that their sudden canceling was not “authorized by law.” The suit targeted about $250 million in canceled grants, and of those, about $148 million went to California.
Joining California in the suit were Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Illinois, Wisconsin and Colorado. No Republican-led states have filed suit.
Bonta’s suit relied on the Administrative Procedure Act, which forbids agencies from abruptly changing their regulatory policies without a clear and reasonable explanation.
U.S. District Judge Myong Joun, a Biden appointee, agreed that the Education Department’s decision to abruptly terminate the grants was “arbitrary and capricious” and illegal under the Administrative Procedure Act. He said “there was no individualized analysis of any of the programs” that were terminated.
On March 10, he issued a temporary restraining order to maintain the status quo.
When a federal appeals court refused to lift that order, Trump administration lawyers appealed to the Supreme Court.
“This court should put a swift end to federal district courts’ unconstitutional reign as self-appointed managers of Executive branch fund and grant disbursement decisions,” wrote acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris in her appeal in U.S. Department of Education vs. State of California.
A statement from Bonta’s office said the Supreme Court order “does not conclusively resolve any of the issues in this case, and the preliminary injunction motion is still pending.”
“The Trump Administration is pursuing an anti-education agenda that would yank teachers out of schools and prevent new teachers-in-training who are close to being ready to serve our students from filling empty classrooms,” Bonta said in a statement. “While we would have preferred to maintain the [temporary restraining order], we respect the court process, and we look forward to continuing to make our case in the lower court.”
Bonta’s suit said the California State University and the University of California lost eight grants that were valued at about $56 million. The aim of the federal grants was to recruit and train teachers to work in “hard to staff” schools in rural or urban areas.
Among the canceled programs was a $7.5-million grant to Cal State L.A. to train and certify 276 teachers over five years to work in high-need or high-poverty schools in the Los Angeles Unified and Pasadena Unified school districts.
Other cancellations included an $8-million program at UCLA to train at least 314 middle school principals as well as math, English, science and social science teachers to serve in several Los Angeles county school districts.
In a statement, California Teachers Assn. President David Goldberg criticized the Supreme Court’s ruling.
“At a time when we are facing ongoing staffing shortages in our public schools, we should be devoting more resources to the recruitment and retention of educators, not holding critical resources hostage to push political agendas,” Goldberg said.
Times staff writer Daniel Miller contributed to this story.
