Matt Platkin and other attorneys general allege the Trump administration’s bid to cut $600 million in congressionally approved funding violates federal law. (Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor)
New Jersey and a coalition of other states on Thursday sued the federal government, arguing President Donald Trump’s attempt to cut $600 million in congressionally approved teacher training grants violates federal law that governs the process U.S. agencies use to create regulations.
The challenge by Attorney General Matt Platkin and attorneys general in states like California, Massachusetts, and five others argues Trump’s attempt to terminate that funding outstripped executive authority and must be barred.
“Congress authorized this spending,” Platkin told the New Jersey Monitor. “As we’ve argued in other cases successfully, the president cannot just decide that he does not want to spend money that Congress authorizes and appropriates.”
In a mid-February press release, the U.S. Department of Education said it terminated those programs because they touched on topics like diversity, equity, and inclusion.
The president is not a king. He has to follow the law.
– New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin
The state attorneys general allege the grants’ elimination would only worsen longstanding teacher shortages, particularly in the urban and rural school districts the program is intended to aid.
It would also harm special education students whose supports — like aides — are paid for by federal dollars under the Americans with Disabilities Education Act, they said.
“If you have a kid with autism, odds are their aide that they have with them all day that’s making sure they can go through the day and get the learning environment that they deserve is funded in some way, shape, or form by our federal government,” Platkin said.
New Jersey has for years faced shortages of teachers, with particularly severe shortfalls of educators for subjects like math, science, special education, and English instruction for non-native speakers.
AÂ report drafted by Rutgers University researchers last year found the state issued only 1.1 provisional teaching certificates for every teacher that left the profession in the 2022-2023 school year, down from 2.9 certifications nine years earlier.
The study warns that ratio risks unsustainably reducing the state’s ranks of educators. Because at least 10% of teachers leave the profession within their first three years, hiring roughly as many replacements would further winnow teachers’ ranks over time.
Thursday’s suit, which follows a separate legal action from teacher preparatory programs, is the latest of many Platkin has lodged to block actions taken by the Trump administration.
Past filings have targeted administration efforts to stop disaster relief funding, lay off significant chunks of the federal workforce, and restrict constitutionally granted birthright citizenship.
The spate of suits has drawn ire from New Jersey Republicans, who in recent days have called for Platkin to resign.
“Our attorney general is very busy inserting himself into federal politics to do anything here in New Jersey,” Assemblyman Erik Peterson (R-Warren) said on the Assembly floor last week. “He should resign. He’s a disgrace, and he needs to go back to wherever he came from. And we need an attorney general who will do the will of the people.”
Assembly Republicans have drafted articles of impeachment against Platkin, but there’s little chance of them securing the simple majority in the Assembly to actually impeach him, let alone the two-thirds Senate supermajority they need to remove him from office.
Platkin said he has paid those efforts little mind.
“I don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about partisan political attacks,” he said. “My job is to uphold the law, uphold the constitution, and protect the residents of this state. That’s what I do every single day.”
More suits could be on the horizon. Trump has said he wants to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, created by an act of Congress, and reports have said he is preparing to issue an executive operation to begin dismantling the agency as early as this week.
“Any attempt to unlawfully gut or end a federal agency that’s congressionally authorized is something we are going to, I think, very strongly oppose,” Platkin said. “The president is not a king. He has to follow the law, and there’s legal ways to effectuate the policies that he cares about.”
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