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Department of Education v. California
On March 10, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts issued a temporary restraining order enjoining the government from terminating various education-related grants.
The order also requires the government to pay out past-due grant obligations and to continue paying obligations as they accrue. The district court’s conclusion rested on a finding that respondents are likely to succeed on the merits of their claims under the Administrative Procedure Act.
On March 26, the government filed an application with the U.S. Supreme Court to vacate the district court’s March 10 order (as extended on March 24) and requested an immediate administrative stay. The application was presented to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and was referred by her to the court.
In a per curiam opinion on April 4, the court noted that although the courts of appeals generally lack appellate jurisdiction over appeals from TROs, several factors counsel in favor of construing the district court’s order as an appealable preliminary injunction.
Among other considerations, the high court found that the district court’s order carries many of the hallmarks of a preliminary injunction. Moreover, it noted the district court’s “basis for issuing the order [is] strongly challenged,” as the government is likely to succeed in showing the district court lacked jurisdiction to order the payment of money under the APA.
The Supreme Court determined that the APA’s waiver of sovereign immunity does not apply “if any other statute that grants consent to suit expressly or impliedly forbids the relief which is sought.” Nor does the waiver apply to claims seeking “money damages.”
The high court acknowledged a district court’s jurisdiction “is not barred by the possibility” that an order setting aside an agency’s action may result in the disbursement of funds. But, as it has recognized, the court wrote that the APA’s limited waiver of immunity does not extend to orders “to enforce a contractual obligation to pay money” along the lines of what the district court ordered here.
Instead, the Tucker Act grants the Court of Federal Claims jurisdiction over suits based on “any express or implied contract with the United States.”
As for the remaining stay factors, the Supreme Court found that the respondents have not refuted the government’s representation that it is unlikely to recover the grant funds once they are disbursed. No grantee “promised to return withdrawn funds should its grant termination be reinstated,” and the district court declined to impose bond.
By contrast, the high court found the government compellingly argued that respondents would not suffer irreparable harm while the TRO is stayed. Respondents have represented in this litigation that they have the financial wherewithal to keep their programs running.
So, the high court reasoned that if respondents ultimately prevail, they can recover any wrongfully withheld funds through suit in an appropriate forum. And it found that if respondents instead decline to keep the programs operating, then any ensuing irreparable harm would be of their own making.
The Supreme Court construed the application as seeking a stay pending appeal and granted the application, pending the disposition of the appeal in the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals and disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari, if such a writ is timely sought. Should certiorari be denied, the court noted the stay will terminate automatically. In the event certiorari is granted, the stay will terminate after the court issues its decision.
Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. said he would deny the application.
Justice Elena Kagan wrote a dissenting opinion, explaining she thought the grant of the stay was a mistake. “Nowhere in its papers does the [government] defend the legality of canceling the education grants at issue here,” Kagan wrote. “And contra the per curiam, the respondent [states] have consistently represented that the loss of these grants will force them — indeed, has already forced them — to curtail teacher training programs.”
Jackson, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissented. Jackson argued that the TRO issued by the lower court expired in three days and would have become moot even earlier if the district court ruled on the preliminary injunction motion.
“With the TRO on its last legs, a majority of this [court] has chosen to dive into this dispute today, allowing the [department] to implement immediately its new summary grant-termination policy,” Jackson wrote. “It does so even though the TRO preserves the pretermination status quo and causes zero concrete harm to the [government].”
She argued that reinstating the policy will “inflict significant harm on grantees — a fact that the [government] barely contests.”