A federal appeals court has declined to lift a judge's order blocking President Donald Trump's administration from carrying out his executive order to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education and requiring it to reinstate employees who were terminated in a mass layoff.
The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on June 4 rejected the Trump administration's request to put on hold an injunction issued by a lower-court judge last week at the urging of several Democratic-led states, school districts and teachers' unions.
The U.S. Department of Justice had asked for a swift ruling from the 1st Circuit so that it could promptly take the case up to the 6-3 conservative majority U.S. Supreme Court if the appeals court did not rule in its favor.