BURSTThe Trump administration’s request for the Supreme Court to intervene in a fight over federal teacher development grants has elevated an expanding series of legal battles implicating the administration’s sweeping shifts in education policy.
More than 20 lawsuits have been filed, from one against President Trump’s executive order aimed at gutting the Education Department to others from pro-Palestinian student activists challenging efforts to deport them.
Most of the legal challenges have just begun, meaning final decisions could be months or years away as schools and students wait to see the sweeping effects the Trump administration’s efforts could have in the classroom.
Here are the education policy battles that are going through the legal system:
Pro-Palestinian foreign students fighting to stay in the country
Multiple foreign students and faculty who engaged in pro-Palestinian demonstrations last year are taking the Trump administration to court over efforts to take away their immigration status and kick them out of the country.
It started with Mahmoud Khalil, the lead negotiator for Columbia University’s pro-Palestinian encampments last spring who received his graduate degree in December.
The Trump administration took Khalil into custody on March 8 using a rarely cited provision that says the secretary of State can deport a noncitizen if they pose a threat to U.S. foreign policy.
Later, the government argued Khalil did not disclose previous organizations he worked for, such as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, on his permanent resident application.
The first battle in the case — where it will be litigated — is still underway as Khalil, a green card holder, remains in custody while his wife, an American citizen, is due to give birth soon.
On Friday, a federal judge held a hearing on whether to keep Khalil’s challenge in New Jersey or transfer it to Louisiana where he is held, as the government desires. That trajectory would route any appeal through the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, regarded as the most conservative federal appeals court in the country. A ruling could come at any time.
The use of the legal provision on Khalil was only the beginning, especially for those associated with Columbia.
A third-year student at the university with a green card, Yunseo Chung, who has been in the U.S. since she was 7, sued Monday over efforts to revoke her status and deport her. She was also involved in the pro-Palestinian protests but not in a high-profile position like Khalil.
A federal judge granted Chung’s request to temporarily block immigration authorities from detaining her as the challenge proceeds. The judge will hold May 20 hearing on whether to grant a longer injunction.
Green card holders cannot lose their status or be deported without a ruling from an immigration judge.
The Trump administration is also going after student visas, which are an easier target for the federal government because they do not require a judge’s approval to revoke.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Thursday that at least 300 student visas have been revoked since Trump took office a little over two months ago.
High-profile cases of students who had their visas revoked have come from from Columbia, Cornell University, the University of Alabama and Tufts University.
The case at Cornell against Monomou Taal is transpiring at the same time Taal is suing the administration over policies to deport foreign students. A judge Thursday declined the Cornell student's request to immediately block the policies, but Taal has since amended his lawsuit and is now trying again.
In all the known, headline-grabbing challenges so far, judges have ruled the students are to stay in the country, for now, and are awaiting further court hearings.
Multiple academic groups also filed a lawsuit against the administration over its deportation efforts against foreign students and faculty, alleging it has created an environment “terrorizing students and faculty for their exercise of First Amendment rights in the past, intimidating them from exercising those rights now, and silencing political viewpoints that the government disfavors.”
Teacher training programs at the Supreme Court
This week, the Trump administration took its fight to block two federal teacher development grants to the Supreme Court. A ruling could come within days.
The Trump administration slashed the grants back in February for teacher training programs, alleging they focused on "divisive ideologies." The Education Department said the programs focused on critical race theory, diversity, equity and inclusion, social justice, anti-racism, white privilege and white supremacy.
The application asks the justices to lift a judge’s order enabling eight Democratic states suing over the block to immediately draw down $65 million in funds. It is one of multiple emergency motions the administration has filed urging the high court to rein in lower judges over accusations they are improperly intruding on executive authority.
“So long as there is no prompt appellate review of these orders, there is no end in sight for district-court fiscal micromanagement. Only this Court can right the ship — and the time to do so is now,” acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris wrote in filings.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, former President Biden’s sole appointee to the high court, receives the emergency appeal by default. She could act on the request alone or refer it to the full court for a vote.
The Democratic attorneys general suing filed their response Friday, arguing the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction given the temporary nature of the lower rulings.
"Their stated concern that they will be irreparably harmed by improper draw-downs of grant funds in the brief period before the temporary restraining order expires depends entirely on unsubstantiated speculation," the states wrote of the administration's request.
Trump's dismantling of the Education Department
Moves to eliminate the Department of Education have hit lawsuits every step of the way.
It started with the cuts to the teaching training grants soon after Trump was inaugurated, which have now made it the whole way to the Supreme Court.
The next lawsuit came when the Education Department fired half of its workforce, going from more than 4,000 employees to a little over 2,000. A request from Democratic attorneys general in Washington, D.C. and 20 states to reinstate the employees is set for an April 25 hearing in Boston.
The Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates and two parents filed a suit saying the Education Department would not be able to fulfill its congressionally mandated obligations to students with disabilities due to the cuts to the Office of Civil Rights.
It didn’t stop there, after the president kicked efforts up a notch by signing an executive order on March 20 telling Secretary Linda McMahon to dismantle the federal agency as far as she legally can.
Multiple lawsuits were filed soon after by teacher unions and school districts alleging the Trump administration is violating the Administrative Procedure Act by trying to dismantle the department.
And more are likely on the horizon as Trump declared he would be moving the department's student loan portfolio to the Small Business Administration and programs for students with disabilities to the Health and Human Services Department.
Education Department’s 'Dear Colleague' letter around DEI
In the middle of the cuts and changes to the department, the federal agency on Feb. 14 put out a “Dear Colleague” letter that rattled universities, seemingly expanding on the 2023 Supreme Court ruling outlawing affirmative action in college admissions.
The language was softened after some concerns that the guidance to get rid of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs at universities would include clubs that were based on race or ethnicity.
The letter now faces three federal lawsuits. The case the furthest along is in New Hampshire, where the National Education Association has a pending request to block implementation of the letter.
In Michigan, the owner of a firm that helps Black students sued last week. And in Maryland, the American Federation of Teachers filed a lawsuit against the letter alleging it was unconstitutionally vague and violated free speech protections.
“That racial discrimination was written into the laws of the United States is a historical fact that cannot be erased by a Dear Colleague Letter,” the complaint reads. “Black Americans were enslaved by law, laws prevented Black Americans from owning property, attending public schools, and voting. This is, by definition, a legal structure that imposes differences based on race.”
“It is therefore not possible to teach bare factual information about history without acknowledging structural racism — but doing so would now seem to constitute illegal discrimination in the eyes of the Department of Education,” it continued.
Trump funding cuts to universities
Also under legal scrutiny is the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) efforts to substantially reduce “indirect” costs in research grants, an initiative that largely impacts universities and medical centers.
Various national groups have challenged the plan like the Association of American Universities and the Association of American Medical Colleges. Individual universities have joined the legal fight, too, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of California and Cornell University.
On March 5, U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley, a Biden appointee, indefinitely blocked the administration’s cuts nationwide.
Though the administration still can do so, it has notably not yet sought to appeal Kelley’s ruling. The lack of urgency contrasts with how the administration has appealed many other nationwide injunctions in a matter of hours or days.
Separately, the Trump administration has directly taken funds from three schools — Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Maine — for alleged violations regarding transgender students in sports and the schools' handling of antisemitism.
Columbia took the biggest hit of a $400 million funding pause for alleged inaction on antisemitism. Although Columbia has caved to the federal government’s demands and changed its policies, funding has not been restored.
On Tuesday, the American Federation of Teachers and American Association of University Professors filed a lawsuit against Columbia’s funding pause, alleging it is an “unlawful and unprecedented effort to overpower a university’s academic autonomy and control the thought, association, scholarship, and expression of its faculty and students.”