A coalition of twenty Democrat-led states filed a lawsuit yesterday to block the Trump administration’s severe cuts to the Department of Education. The suit followed the day after the Trump administration announced more than 1,300 employee layoffs in the Department.

Trump also announced he is dismantling the Department of Education, although by law this is something only Congress should be able to do. In public statements, Trump called the Department of Education a “con job.”

The plaintiffs, in the 53-page lawsuit, say that the “Administration’s goal of eliminating the Department of Education by any means necessary has been plainly and repeatedly stated: President Trump called the Department “a big con job” and declared that he would “like to close it immediately.”

Furthermore, the complaint explains, “As the Supreme Court put it nearly a century ago, “[t]o Congress under its legislative power is given the establishment of offices [and] the determination of their functions and jurisdiction.” Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52, 129 (1926). And, thus, administrative agencies “are creatures of statute.” Nat’l Fed. of Indep. Bus. v. OSHA, 595 U.S. 109, 117 (2022).”

In the suit, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, the states asked the court to immediately stop the cuts, claiming that the White House administration’s actions to dismantle the department are unconstitutional and illegal, pointing out that the department and its programs were authorized by Congress.

In court documents, the plaintiffs argue that the president, as the head of the government’s executive branch, “can neither outright abolish an agency nor incapacitate it by cutting away the personnel required to implement the agency’s statutorily-mandated duties.”

Currently, the states participating in the lawsuit include 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. More states are expected to join.

New York Attorney General Letitia James is the de facto leader of the states filing suit in federal court. Plaintiffs allege in the complaint that the severe cuts to the department will cause “devastating effects” and chaos in every state in the country since they receive school funding from millions to billions for the Department of Education.

Attorney General James, in a statement, accused the Trump administration of using the excuse of cost-cutting to devastate vital services and programs for students.

“This administration may claim to be stopping waste and fraud, but it is clear that their only mission is to take away the necessary services, resources, and funding that students and their families need,” said Attorney General James. “Firing half of the Department of Education’s workforce will hurt students throughout New York and the nation, especially low-income students and those with disabilities who rely on federal funding. This outrageous effort to leave students behind and deprive them of a quality education is reckless and illegal. Today I am taking action to stop the madness and protect our schools and the students who depend on them.”

In total, Department of Education programs impact more than 50 million students in K-12 in 98,000 public schools, located in 18,200 school districts, plus another 32,000 private schools in the U.S. The department serves students with special needs, as well as students from low-income families, who receive federal ED funding and services. ED special education funding pays for assistive technology for students with disabilities; teacher pay and benefits; the special transportation needed for special education students; physical and speech therapy; social worker support for those students, and more. ED assists students who live in rural areas by giving those students educational programs that may not otherwise be available in their area, with staff, resources, and the opportunity to apply for competitive grants.

In the suit, the coalition of 20 states says that ending ED will do devastating harm to states, including the gutting of ED’s Office of Civil Rights, the agency that lives inside the department, which protects students from discrimination in U.S. schools based on race, sex, disability, and other protected characteristics.

The suit claims that with such a giant staff reduction, the department would be “incapacitated” and unable to function. The suit states that gutting the department will harm special needs students and deprive all students of the resources necessary for their education and safety.

In legal documents, the suit says that dismantling the Department of Education will also devastate the handling of financial aid; raise the cost of American students going to colleges and universities; and create a long backlog of students who apply for loans, Pell Grants, work-study programs and more.

Soon after ED was created as a cabinet-level department by President Jimmy Carter in 1979, President Ronald Reagan attempted to dismantle the Department of Education in 1982, but his plan did not pass Congress. Since Reagan’s efforts, numerous attempts have been made by Republicans to shutter the department, always failing due to Congress rejecting the notion.

Now that President Trump has pushed past these guardrails and bypassed Congress in his many executive actions, it falls to the courts through the resolution of civil litigation complaints to determine the limits of presidential power when it clashes with the legislative branch.