A coalition of education organizations filed two federal lawsuits in 2025 challenging the Trump administration's actions that have withheld nearly $1.9 billion in congressionally appropriated education research funds and significantly curtailed operations at the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). The suits, filed in different federal districts, allege violations of the Administrative Procedure Act, the Antideficiency Act, and the constitutional separation of powers.
Two legal challenges
The first suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, names the Education Department and the Office of Management and Budget as defendants. Plaintiffs include the National Center for Learning Disabilities, the Knowledge Alliance, and the Massachusetts Teachers Association. The complaint alleges the agencies are unlawfully withholding nearly $1.9 billion appropriated for IES programs for fiscal years 2025 and 2026, and asks the court to order the funds released. The affected programs include the National Center for Education Statistics, National Center for Education Research, and National Center for Special Education Research, according to K12 Dive. The Education Department stated that it intends to use appropriated funds in accordance with statutory requirements while supporting research activities. OMB did not respond to requests for comment.
The second suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by the National Academy of Education and the National Council on Measurement in Education, challenges the cancellation of over $900 million in IES contracts on February 10, 2025. Those contracts included vendor agreements required to maintain and update IES data systems. The complaint further alleges that a Reduction in Force on March 11, 2025 eliminated approximately 90 percent of IES staff, shrinking the agency to about twenty employees. The National Center for Education Statistics fell from roughly 100 employees to three, according to the court filing.
The D.C. complaint identifies specific datasets affected, including the National Assessment of Educational Progress, EDFacts, the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, and international assessments such as TIMSS. It also alleges that researchers' access to existing federal education data has been terminated, contrary to congressional mandates under the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002.
Comparative precedent
The current legal challenges echo earlier confrontations over the executive branch's authority to reshape federal education research. In the early 1980s, the Reagan administration proposed eliminating the Education Department entirely and sought deep cuts to education research and statistics. According to the National Education Association, Congress pushed back, the department survived, and some research functions were scaled back but not eliminated. The department's research arm was later reorganized into IES under the Education Sciences Reform Act in 2002.
Protect Democracy, a legal advocacy organization, has documented what it describes as a pattern of the Trump administration withholding congressionally appropriated funds across multiple agencies beyond education. The organization is litigating to restore funding for congressionally mandated education programs, arguing that such actions violate Congress's appropriations power and the Impoundment Control Act.
Evidence and legal status
The Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 statutorily mandates that the Department of Education collect, maintain, analyze, and disseminate high-quality data through IES and its four research centers. The D.C. complaint argues that executive actions restricting these activities violate obligations Congress has not curtailed, as stated in the court filing. Congress continues to appropriate hundreds of millions of dollars for these functions.
A federal judge denied a preliminary injunction sought by the plaintiffs in the D.C. case. The judge found that the Administrative Procedure Act was not designed to shield agencies from political shifts and that APA challenges must target specific agency actions rather than broadly reversing multifaceted organizational changes. The ruling limits the legal pathway for those seeking to reverse the IES restructuring through a preliminary injunction, according to the memorandum opinion.
Update - September 19, 2026
On September 17, 2026, Judge Allison D. Burroughs of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts ruled that OMB's apportionment footnotes— which required IES funds to be spent in compliance with Executive Orders 14151 and 14332 —were "contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious" under the Administrative Procedure Act. The court granted plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment on those claims, vacating and setting aside the Executive Order footnotes for IES funds expiring September 30, 2026. Judge Burroughs found that OMB had not pointed to "clear congressional authorization" for using apportionment footnotes to advance executive branch policy objectives, rejecting the government's reliance on a single sentence in the Antideficiency Act [12][13][14].
The court declined to issue a definitive ruling on whether the Education Department unlawfully delayed obligating approximately $180 million in IES funds before the September 30, 2026 expiration deadline, instead ordering the Department to file a status report by September 28, 2026. Judge Burroughs reserved judgment on plaintiffs' remaining claims, including the continued withholding of more than $465 million in fiscal 2026 IES funds, which expire September 30, 2027 [12][13].
Separately, in August 2026, IES Acting Director Matthew Soldner announced the agency's first new competitive grant competitions in more than 15 months, outlining plans for approximately $250 million in fiscal 2027 grants across three waves. The first wave, with applications due October 1, 2026, would fund researcher training, state longitudinal data systems, and new statistical methods. Soldner said grant priorities—narrowed to topics including STEM, literacy, and low-incidence disabilities—would carry through fiscal 2029 [15].