The Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration Friday in a case challenging the government’s authority to cancel education grants related to diversity programs.
The justices gave the administration the green light to proceed with terminating the grants, overriding a lower court’s blockade on the action, while the litigation plays out in lower courts.
A final ruling on the merits of the case will come later.
The justices in a 5-4 order said if the government eventually won the case, it would not be able to claw back funds that were already dolled out. If the challengers won, they could get the canceled grant money restored.
“If respondents ultimately prevail, they can recover any wrongfully withheld funds through suit in an appropriate forum. And if respondents instead decline to keep the programs operating, then any ensuing irreparable harm would be of their own making,” the majority wrote in the order.
Eight states led by California challenged the Trump administration’s decision to cancel the DEI-related grants. They accused the administration of violating the Administrative Procedure Act that governs rule-making.
A federal judge in Massachusetts issued a temporary restraining order, stopping the administration from taking action.
The opinion Friday was not signed.
The order noted that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. would have denied the Trump administration’s request to lift the temporary restraining order issued by a district court judge.
The three Democratic-appointed justices also dissented.
Justice Elena Kagan, one of the dissenters, said the court should not have acted on an emergency basis with a “barebones briefing.”
“Rather than make new law on our emergency docket, we should have allowed the dispute to proceed in the ordinary way,” she wrote.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor in dissenting, said the temporary restraining order would expire in just three days so the court should not have gotten involved.
“It is beyond puzzling that a majority of Justices conceive of the Government’s application as an emergency. It is likewise baffling that anyone is persuaded that the equities favor the Government,” Justice Jackson wrote.
The administration moved to cancel certain grants within the Department of Education that violated President Trump’s order to end diversity, equity and inclusion policies that he said violate the Constitution and run afoul of civil rights.
One grant that was canceled funded a project involving a racial and ethnic autobiography and asked individuals to discuss challenges they have faced over power imbalances. Another grant sought to instruct teachers on how to implement cultural and social-emotional learning with DEI practices.
The Education Department identified 104 grants that it believed needed to be canceled and left five intact during the review.
The states challenging the cancellation said some recipients of the grants — which they say Congress intended under the Teacher Quality Partnership to be used to recruit qualified teachers to underrepresented areas — did not get notice of the cancellation of the funds.
