Attorney General Bonta Challenges Further Transfer of Core Functions Away from U.S. Department of Education

OAKLAND — California Attorney General Rob Bonta today led a multistate coalition in filing an amended complaint expanding its ongoing legal challenge to the Trump Administration’s attempt to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education (ED). The amended complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, adds new allegations regarding the Trump Administration’s further transfer of critical functions outside of the Department to other agencies. In March, the multistate coalition filed a lawsuit challenging the unlawful mass firing at ED and the transfer of core functions out of the Department. Despite this, ED began transferring additional critical functions, including its student loan program, K-12 formula funding, and career and vocational training, via Inter Agency Agreements (IAAs) to other agencies without consideration of whether these agencies were equipped to handle these tasks. Because of this, Attorney General Bonta and the coalition today filed an amended lawsuit that brings new legal claims against the Department. 
 
“The Trump Administration is continuing its illegal effort to dismantle the Department of Education until it finally shutters for good. This isn’t about reducing bureaucracy — if anything these changes are only making bureaucracy worse,” said Attorney General Bonta. “My fellow attorneys general and I stepped in to block these illegal actions, and now we’re going back to court to block this latest maneuver. The right to an education is at the heart of the social contract this nation makes with its citizens. California will continue to defend access to transformative learning for our children from the illegal overreach of the Trump Administration.”  
 
The Department of Education plays an essential role in ensuring the health, safety, and education of children. It provides $7.9 billion annually in federal funding to more than 9,000 public schools across California and serves 5.8 million students. It also administers programs that assist children from low-income families, provides vocational training, and enforces anti-discrimination laws, among countless other responsibilities fundamental to our education system. In each of these programs, and others, congressional acts governing the existence and responsibilities of the Department are deeply intertwined with the education system in other states. Despite this, ED has taken various steps, including multiple reductions in workforce and transferring of functions, to dismantle its existence. 
 
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. In the ongoing legal challenge, Attorney General Bonta and the coalition assert that the steps taken by the Department and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to shut down the Department are unlawful and cannot stand. A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction halting the firings and the First Circuit upheld that ruling, but that decision is currently stayed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
 
On November 18, 2025, the Department announced a significant expansion of its efforts to formally transfer functions out of the Department and to other federal agencies, announcing the creation of six additional partnerships with the Department of Labor, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the State Department via IAAs outside of ED. The goal of these partnerships is to effectuate President Trump’s and Secretary McMahon’s intent of shuttering the Department by vacating it of critical staff, functions, and funding. Examples of these IAAs include: 

• Transferring core functions out of the Department’s Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education
• Moving the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education — a core component of the Department of Education — to the Department of Labor
• Shifting functions of the Office of Postsecondary Education to the Employment and Training Administration. 
• Movement of the Child Care Access Means Parents in School program to the Department of Health and Human Services. 

In today’s amended complaint, Attorney General Bonta and the coalition argue that the recent attempts to transfer critical functions via IAAs directly contradict with Congress’s mandate — expressed in the Department of Education Organization Act and elsewhere — that these crucial functions be performed by ED and not by other agencies or departments of the United States. The coalition alleges that these actions are unlawful because they violate the U.S. Constitution and the Administrative Procedures Act.
 
Attorney General Bonta is leading this lawsuit with New York Attorney General Letitia James, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell, and Hawai’i Attorney General Anne Lopez. They are joined by the attorneys general of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin.