The Supreme Court gave the Trump administration a win Friday, putting on hold a Massachusetts federal judge’s decision requiring the Department of Education to pay out $65 million in grants that included diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
And it is about time, as Democrats are doing all they can to undermine President Donald Trump’s authority to lead the country by judicial decree.
In an unsigned 3-page per curiam decision, a 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court said the eight states led by California that originally filed the suit had not refuted the administration’s “representation that it is unlikely to recover the grant funds once they are disbursed.”
Further, the federal government “compellingly argues that respondents [California et al.] would not suffer irreparable harm while the [temporary restraining order requiring the payments] is stayed. Respondents have represented in this litigation that they have the financial wherewithal to keep their programs running” while the litigation proceeds.
The Court concluded, “So, 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.”
Chief Justice John Roberts joined the liberal members of the court, including Justices Elena Kagan, Kentanji Brown Jackson, and Sonia Sotomayor, in stating they would have denied the Trump administration’s request to not issue the grants.
Kagan wrote in her dissent, “Nowhere in its papers does the Government defend the legality of canceling the education grants at issue here.”
Jackson added in hers, joined by Sotomayor, “This Court’s eagerness to insert itself into this early stage of ongoing litigation over the lawfulness of the Department’s actions — even when doing so facilitates the infliction of significant harms on the Plaintiff States, and even though the Government has not bothered to press any argument that the Department’s harm‐causing conduct is lawful — is equal parts unprincipled and unfortunate. It is also entirely unwarranted.”
Roberts did not write a dissent, but simply indicated he would have denied the Trump administration’s emergency appeal to his Court.
Has Trump done an effective job fighting DEI ideology?
SCOTUS Blog reported that the liberal First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Boston, had denied the administration’s efforts to stay Joe Biden appointee U.S. District Judge Myong Joun’s order to make the payments.
“Eight states, led by California, filed a lawsuit in federal court in Massachusetts in early March. They contended that universities and nonprofits in their states had received grants through the programs, and that the Department of Education had violated the federal law governing administrative agencies when it ended those grants,” the SCOTUS blog further noted.
The Trump administration filed an emergency petition at the Supreme Court on March 24 in which Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris asserted that unless the justices intervened, federal courts around the country will continue to exceed their powers “by ordering the Executive Branch to restore lawfully terminated grants across the government, keep paying for programs that the Executive Branch views as inconsistent with the interests of the United States, and send out the door taxpayer money that may never be clawed back.”
Harris urged the high court to “put a swift end to federal district courts’ unconstitutional reign as self-appointed managers of Executive Branch funding and grant-disbursement decisions.”
“This case exemplifies a flood of recent suits that raise the question: ‘Does a single district-court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever)’ millions in taxpayer dollars?” the solicitor general asked,
Her question quoted from Justice Samuel Alito’s dissent in a recent decision regarding payments of foreign aid that the Trump administration is seeking to cancel.
Attorney General Pam Bondi argued on Fox News over the weekend concerning the win in the education grants case: “This particular one … was very important because the court said that President Trump can control where our tax dollars go and what they’re allocated for. And we do not have to spend them on DEI, and that’s what was happening.”
“So the ramifications of that are huge for our country, and that impacts every single agency,” she added.
This week, the Department of Justice won a major case at the Supreme Court which held that President Trump does not have to spend YOUR hard-earned tax dollars on DEI.
We will continue to fight every day in court on behalf of the American people, and we will prevail. pic.twitter.com/4RqflaqdCV
— Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) April 6, 2025
Bondi also said that over 170 lawsuits have been filed against the administration and 50 injunctions issued by judges. “That should be the constitutional crisis, right there,” she said.
Friday’s SCOTUS win indicates that the tide may be turning on the slew of Democrat lawsuits against Trump, thereby reaffirming his constitutional authority to lead the executive branch.
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