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Parking permits. Desk space. Access cards.

, the U.S. Department of Education instead has spent weeks ostensibly working on the logistics. Meanwhile, the Trump administration wants the U.S. Supreme Court to decide they don鈥檛 have to restore those jobs after all.

The legal argument over the job status of Education Department workers is testing the extent to which President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon can reshape the federal bureaucracy without congressional approval.

The employees, meanwhile, remain in limbo, getting paid for jobs they aren鈥檛 allowed to perform.

An analysis done by the union representing Education Department employees estimates the government is spending about $7 million a month for workers not to work. That figure does not include supervisors who are not part of the American Federation of Government Employee Local 252.

鈥淚t is terribly inefficient,鈥� said Brittany Coleman, chief steward for AFGE Local 252 and an attorney in the Office for Civil Rights. 鈥淭he American people are not getting what they need because we can鈥檛 do our jobs.鈥�

in March, a week after she was confirmed by the Senate, and described them as a first step toward dismantling the Education Department. A few days later, directing McMahon to do everything in her legal authority to shut down the department.

The Somerville and Easthampton school districts in Massachusetts, along with the American Federation of Teachers, other education groups, sued McMahon over the cuts. They argued the layoffs were so extensive that the Education Department would not be able to perform its duties under the law.

The , , and the particularly hard. These agencies are responsible for federally mandated work within the Education Department. By law, only Congress can get rid of the Education Department.

U.S. District Court Judge Myong Joun agreed, issuing a sweeping preliminary injunction in May that ordered the Education Department to bring laid off employees back to work and blocked any further effort to dismantle or substantively restructure the department.

The Trump administration sought a stay of that order, and the case is on the emergency docket of the Supreme Court, where a decision could come any day.

In the , Solicitor General John Sauer argued that the harms the various plaintiffs had described were largely hypothetical, that they had not shown the department wasn鈥檛 fulfilling its duties, and that they didn鈥檛 have standing to sue because layoffs primarily affect department employees, not states, school districts, and education organizations.

Sauer further argued that the injunction violates the separation of powers, putting the judicial branch in charge of employment decisions that are the purview of the executive branch.

鈥淭he injunction rests on the untenable assumption that every terminated employee is necessary to perform the Department of Education鈥檚 statutory functions,鈥� Sauer wrote in a court filing. 鈥淭hat injunction effectively appoints the district court to a Cabinet role and bars the Executive Branch from terminating anyone.鈥�

The Supreme Court, with a conservative 6-3 majority, has been friendlier to the administration鈥檚 arguments than lower court judges. Already the court has allowed to through the courts. And it has .

The Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Last week, Joun issued a telling the Education Department that it must reinstate employees in the Office for Civil Rights. The Victims Rights Law Center and other groups had described thousands of cases left in limbo, with children suffering severe bullying or unable to safely return to school.

Meanwhile, the Education Department continues to file weekly updates with Joun about the complexities of reinstating the laid-off employees. , Chief of Staff Rachel Oglesby said an 鈥渁d hoc committee of senior leadership鈥� is meeting weekly to figure out where employees might park and where they should report to work.

Since the layoffs, the department has closed regional offices, consolidated offices in three Washington, D.C. buildings into one, reduced its contracts for parking space, and discontinued an interoffice shuttle.

In the , Oglesby said the department is working on a 鈥渞eintegration plan.鈥�

Coleman said she finds these updates 鈥渓aughable.鈥�

鈥淚f you are really willing to do what the court is telling you to do, then your working group would have figured out a way to get us our laptops,鈥� she said.

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at .

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