Twenty-one Democratic state attorneys general sued President Trump and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon today, 48 hours after the Department of Education announced it was firing more than 1,300 employees, which, combined with previously Trump-Musk efforts to cull the staff, reduced the employee roster to less than half of the 4000+ person team that was working as of January. 

The 53-page complaint, filed in federal court in Massachusetts, alleges that the staff reductions are illegal and unconstitutional, because they are “equivalent to incapacitating key, statutorily-mandated functions of the Department.” The AGs say that although McMahon has authority from Congress to restructure the Department, 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.”

Among the federal statutes that the state AGs contend will be undermined by this week’s staff cuts are those covering higher education, including the Department’s obligations to ensure that federal student grants and loans may be used only at colleges and universities that provide quality educations and comply with the law. The complaint notes that the Department is charged with ensuring that colleges receiving federal aid are financially responsible, that they submit to financial audits, and that they provide adequate counseling to students concerning debt management.

The AGs also note that the Department is required to review and approve private college accrediting agencies, because under the law only schools approved by Department-recognized accreditors are eligible for federal student aid. Without that process, the AGs warn, “institutions of higher education may engage in profit-seeking behaviors without relating any educational benefits to students.”

The AGs might have added that the cuts will undermine the capacity of the Department to directly investigate colleges that engage in predatory and deceptive behavior. Data released by the Department shows the largest number of layoffs — 326 people — were at the Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA), which oversees student lending and school compliance with legal obligations not to mislead and abuse students.

The Department of Education’s higher education accountability efforts over decades often have been half-hearted and ineffectual; although some truly awful for-profit chains shut down in the wake of Department investigations and actions, especially during the late Obama years and the Biden term, many students, and hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars, have still been directed to deceptive, poor-quality schools that have left many students worse off than when they started. But gutting these efforts to the degree suggested by this week’s staff reductions would make matters much worse.  And the first-term higher education record of President Trump, guided by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and her aide Diane Auer Jones, was heavily skewed in favor of slashing accountability rules and enforcement, providing no reason to be optimistic that an aim of dumping much of the staff this year is to improve accountability.

In short, these Department higher education layoffs are likely to dramatically increase waste, fraud, and abuse — once again exposing as a cynical lie the stated purpose of the Trump-Musk DOGE project.

The cuts would also undermine core Department responsibilities in K-12 education, civil rights, disability rights, privacy rights, campus safety, and the student loan portfolio.

Secretary McMahon is publicly insisting that everything will be fine and all required tasks accomplished efficiently with the reduced and reorganized staff. But, as the new lawsuit from the attorneys general notes, McMahon said on Tuesday that the firings are the “first step” on the road to a complete shutdown of the Department. 

The attorneys general who filed the complaint are from Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, Wisconsin, Vermont and the District of Columbia.

Former Department officials and education advocates plan to rally Friday morning at 8 am outside Department of Education headquarters in Washington to protest the mass firings and plans to shut down the agency.

UPDATE 03-17-25 3:30 pm:

From letter sent to Sec. McMahon today from Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Senate Appropriations Committee Vice Chair, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-03), Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Committee and the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Subcommittee, and Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Subcommittee:

“The Department is also required by law to operate federal student aid programs and conduct
oversight and enforcement of colleges and universities to ensure access to postsecondary education
for our nation’s students and to help make college more affordable for American families. Some
of these responsibilities include ensuring students can apply for Pell grants and other financial aid
to go to college, ensuring colleges and universities have the information and resources they need to
disburse such aid to students, ensuring colleges and universities protect students’ civil rights,
certifying universities compliance with administrative and fiscal rules to ensure low-quality
colleges and universities cannot participate in Title IV aid programs, overseeing and approving
accreditors, and protecting students and taxpayers from fraudulent universities that leave students
with worthless degrees and debt. The vast reduction in force across the office of Federal Student
Aid (FSA), the Office of General Counsel (OGC), and other offices puts all of this work in
jeopardy.”