New York Attorney General Letitia James on Thursday led a coalition of 20 other attorneys general in suing the Trump administration to stop the dismantling of the Department of Education.
The Trump administration on Tuesday announced that the U.S. DOE would be firing approximately 50% of its workforce. The lawsuit seeks to stop the "targeted destruction" of the federal agency that ensures tens of millions of students receive a quality education and critical resources, James said through a press release.
“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 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.”
The dismantling of the DOE will have devastating effects on states like New York, James said. K-12 schools in New York received $6.17 billion, or $2,438 per student, from the agency in federal fiscal year 2024. Federal funding for public colleges and universities averaged $1,256 per student in New York over the same period.
The administration’s layoff is so massive that the DOE will be incapacitated and unable to perform essential functions, James said. It will deprive students with special needs of critical resources and support; it will gut the Office of Civil Rights, which protects students from discrimination and sexual assault; it would additionally hamstring the processing of financial aid, raising costs for college and university students who will have a harder time accessing loans, Pell Grants, and work-study programs. This would be particularly harmful to New York, where more students receive Pell Grants than almost any other state, James said.
The DOE programs serve nearly 18,200 school districts and over 50 million K-12 students attending roughly 98,000 public schools and 32,000 private schools throughout the country. Its higher education programs provide services and support to more than 12 million postsecondary students annually.
Joining James in filing the lawsuit are 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.
