On March 13, 2025, New York Attorney General Letitia James, California Attorney General Rob Bonta, Hawaii Attorney General Anne Lopez, and Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell co-led a coalition of 21 attorneys general in filing a federal lawsuit in Massachusetts to stop the dismantling of the Department of Education.   

On March 11, 2025, the Department of Education initiated a reduction in workforce impacting nearly 50% of the Department’s employees, as part of the Trump administration’s “final mission” to dismantle the Department.  The Department of Education’s 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 support more than 12 million postsecondary students annually.  

Students with disabilities and students from low-income families are some of the primary beneficiaries of Department of Education services and funding. Department of Education funds for special education include support for assistive technology for students with disabilities, teacher salaries and benefits, transportation to help children receive the services and programming they need, physical therapy and speech therapy services, and social workers to help manage students’ educational experience. The Department of Education also supports students in rural communities by offering programs designed to help rural school districts that often lack the personnel and resources needed to compete for competitive grants.  

The coalition contends that the actions taken by the Department of Education fall outside the legal authority of the Executive branch and argues that these measures are arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act.  A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction on May 22, 2025, blocking the Trump administration from moving forward with its plan to dismantle the Department and ordered fired employees be reinstated. On July 14, 2025, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3, to stay, or pause, the District Court’s injunction, allowing the Trump administration’s plans to dismantle the Department of Education, beginning with laying off half its employees, to proceed.

Neither a president nor his administration can abolish or render useless a department of the United States on a whim. Students in Hawaiʻi—from K-12 to the University of Hawaiʻi—rely upon the U.S. Department of Education, its programs and its public servants because they are supported by federal laws passed by Congress. There is no higher calling in government than to fight for a better future for our children. My department will proudly fight for that future, including for federal support for low-income children and students with disabilities and for combatting discrimination in education. Attorney General Anne Lopez