Is the DOE Shut Down? Executive Order, Layoffs, and Courts

No. As of mid-2026, the U.S. Department of Education is not shut down. It still exists, still has a Secretary, and still administers federal student aid and other programs. But it is a much smaller agency than it was in 2024: its workforce has been cut roughly in half, more than 100 of its programs have been moved to other federal departments under interagency agreements, and the administration has openly stated its goal is to close the agency entirely. Whether the Department of Education can actually be shut down is a separate question, and the short answer there is that only Congress can do it.

Why the President Can’t Close It Alone

The Department of Education was created by Congress through the Department of Education Organization Act of 1979. That statute set up the agency’s structure and assigned it specific offices and programs. Because offices like the Office for Civil Rights and programs like Title I and IDEA exist in federal law, they can only be eliminated or reorganized by new legislation.¹

Formally closing the department would require an act of Congress, and in the Senate that bill would need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. Scholars at the Brookings Institution have called the odds of that legislation passing “exceedingly unlikely.” Even if the department were abolished, the underlying federal education laws would remain in force, and some other agency would have to administer them unless Congress repealed those statutes too.¹

Secretary Linda McMahon has acknowledged this openly, saying the agency “clearly cannot be shut down without” Congress and describing the current restructuring as a “proof-of-concept” to build the case for future legislation.²

What the Executive Order Actually Did

On March 20, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order titled “Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities.” It directed Secretary McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities,” while ensuring the “effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits.”³

The order did not close the agency. It set no deadline. It acknowledged that implementation was “subject to the availability of appropriations” and stated that it created no enforceable legal right against the government.³ In practical terms, the order instructed the Secretary to shrink the department administratively and move as much of its work as possible to other agencies, using tools already within the executive branch’s control.

The Layoffs and the Supreme Court Ruling

On March 11, 2025, before the executive order was signed, the Department of Education announced a reduction in force affecting roughly 1,378 employees, about a third of its workforce.⁴

A coalition of 21 state attorneys general sued to block the cuts in federal court in Massachusetts. On May 22, 2025, U.S. District Judge Myong Joun granted a preliminary injunction, finding that the administration’s “true intention is to effectively dismantle the Department” and that the cuts made it “effectively impossible” for the agency to fulfill its statutory obligations. He ordered nearly 1,400 employees reinstated and blocked the transfer of programs out of the department, including a planned move of the $1.6 trillion federal student loan portfolio to the Small Business Administration.⁴⁵

On July 14, 2025, the Supreme Court issued an unsigned order lifting the injunction on an apparent 6–3 vote with no written explanation from the majority. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, wrote a 19-page dissent stating that the ruling “hands the Executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out.” Affected employees were notified that their termination date was August 1, 2025.⁶⁷

Between the layoffs and later reductions, the department’s staff has fallen from roughly 4,200 employees in 2024 to about 2,300, according to Office of Personnel Management data.⁸

Where the Programs Have Gone

With the Supreme Court’s stay clearing the legal path, the department entered into 14 interagency agreements with four other cabinet agencies, transferring 118 programs. Under these agreements, the Education Department retained statutory and policy oversight while the receiving agencies handled day-to-day grant administration.⁹¹⁰

The Department of Labor received the largest share, including Title I funding for low-income schools, Title II-A teacher development grants, Title III-A English learner programs, Title IV enrichment grants, Impact Aid, and Education for Homeless Children and Youths. Labor also took over TRIO (Upward Bound, Talent Search, McNair Scholars), GEAR UP, grants supporting historically Black colleges and universities, and the career and technical education office, which was folded into a rebranded unit called the “One Big Beautiful Talent Agency.”¹¹

Other transfers went to:

Interior: Indian education programs, grants to tribally controlled colleges, and Native Hawaiian and Alaska Native education programs.
State: Fulbright-Hays international education programs, foreign language fellowships, and Centers for International Business Education.¹⁰
HHS: The Child Care Access Means Parents in School program, with special education management slated to follow.⁹
Justice: Core civil rights investigation and enforcement moved to the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, though the Education Department kept leadership of the Office for Civil Rights and final authority over enforcement decisions.¹²

Federal student loans and Pell Grants stayed at the Education Department, though in March 2026 the administration began transitioning the student loan portfolio to the Treasury Department. IDEA special education programs had not been fully transferred as of mid-2026; Secretary McMahon said no final determination had been made about which agency would take them over.⁸

What Still Works for Students and Borrowers

The core mechanics of federal student aid have continued to function through the upheaval. FAFSA processing has remained operational.¹³ Loan servicers like MOHELA, Nelnet, and Aidvantage are private companies rather than government employees, so billing, payment processing, and deferment requests have continued largely uninterrupted.¹⁴

What has suffered is the department’s ability to help individual borrowers with problems. The Office of Consumer Education and Ombudsman was unable to respond to complaints during the October 2025 government shutdown, and complaint-handling capacity had already been reduced by the earlier layoffs.¹⁴ In an acknowledgment that earlier cuts went too far, the Office of Federal Student Aid began hiring 334 new staff members in 2026.⁸

Two other program areas have been hit hard. The Office for Civil Rights lost seven of its 12 regional offices and roughly half its staff. A report from Senator Bernie Sanders’s office found that in 2025 the OCR resolved only 112 agreements, about 1% of its pending cases.¹² The Office of Special Education Programs was reduced to its two most senior staff by late 2025, and the Rehabilitation Services Administration to a single employee. Special education association leaders warned of a “significant risk” that federal IDEA funding could lapse because too few staff remained to administer it.¹⁵ The federal government distributed more than $15 billion in IDEA funding in the most recent year, about 12% of school district spending on special education.¹⁶

Where Things Stand in Congress and the Courts

Congress has neither closed the department nor authorized the administration’s restructuring. Multiple abolition bills have been introduced and stalled. H.R. 899, sponsored by Rep. Thomas Massie, would terminate the department outright and remained in committee with 37 cosponsors as of mid-2026.¹⁷ Senator Mike Rounds’s Returning Education to Our States Act, introduced in April 2025, would redistribute the department’s programs to other agencies and was projected to save $2.2 billion annually; it also stalled in committee.¹⁸ A previous House vote to abolish the agency failed when 60 Republicans joined all Democrats in opposition.¹⁹

On appropriations, Congress has largely rejected the administration’s proposed cuts. The FY 2026 spending package passed by the House provided $79 billion in discretionary funding, roughly $12 billion above the administration’s request, and blocked cuts to Pell Grants, TRIO, GEAR UP, and the OCR budget. It maintained OCR funding at $140 million after the administration proposed cutting it to $91 million.²⁰

Litigation continues. The NAACP, joined by the National Education Association, AFSCME Council 3, and public school parents, sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, arguing the administration’s actions violated the Constitution’s separation-of-powers, spending, and appropriations clauses along with the Administrative Procedure Act. On May 8, 2026, Judge Julie R. Rubin denied the government’s motion to dismiss, and the case is proceeding.²¹ The American Federation of Teachers filed a parallel suit in Massachusetts challenging both the executive order and the reduction in force.²²

The administration’s FY 2027 budget proposal refers to the “final stage of the Department’s existence” and would reduce discretionary spending to $76.5 billion, consolidating 17 K-12 programs into a single $2 billion “Make Education Great Again” grant.²³²⁴ Whether that final stage arrives depends on Congress, not the White House. Until Congress acts, the Department of Education remains open, its statutes remain in force, and its remaining functions continue to be carried out, some by its own reduced staff and many by employees now working under other agencies while still on the department’s payroll.²⁵

1
Brookings Institution. FAQs: The US Department of Education and the Trump Administration
2
Federal News Network. Education Dept Soft Launches Employee Reassignments to Other Agencies
3
The White House. Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities
4
SCOTUSblog. Supreme Court Clears the Way for Trump Administration To Massively Reduce the Size of the Department of Education
5
CNBC. Court Order Challenges Trumps Plans To Move Student Loans to SBA
6
Politico. Supreme Court Education Department Ruling
7
Government Executive. Education Dept Can Proceed With Mass Layoffs After Supreme Court Ruling
8
WYSO. Linda McMahon Defends Dismantling the Education Department, Shifting Its Work
9
Education Week. The Ed Dept Is Sending 118 Programs to Other Agencies
10
Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck. Trump Administration Transfers Responsibility to Other Agencies
11
Government Executive. Trump Admin Acknowledges Difficulties Transferring Education Programs to Other Agencies
12
Higher Ed Dive. Education Department To Move Core Civil Rights Duties to DOJ
13
Federal Student Aid. Government Lapse in Appropriations Federal Student Aid Processing and Customer Service Guidance
14
CNBC. You Still Have To Pay Student Loans During Government Shutdown
15
K-12 Dive. Special Education OSEP OSERS Federal RIFs Government Shutdown
16
Urban Institute. How Dismantling Education Department Could Affect Disabled Students Across US
17
Congress.gov. H.R. 899 All Info
18
Congress.gov. S.1402
19
BBC. Trump Efforts To Dismantle Education Department
20
American Council on Education. House Passes FY26 LHHS Minibus
21
Cohen Milstein. NAACP v. U.S. and U.S. Dept. of Education
22
Education Week. NEA, AFT Sue To Block Trumps Education Department Dismantling
23
U.S. Department of Education. FY 2027 Budget Summary
24
American Council on Education. Trump FY2027 Budget Maintains Pell, Slashes Other Student Aid
25
Government Executive. McMahon Education Layoffs Rebuilding Elimination Effort