A second federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from winding down the Job Corps training program for low-income young adults, finding the move by the US Department of Labor was likely illegal.
Judge Dabney L. Friedrich for the US District Court for the District of Columbia granted a preliminary injunction Friday sought by a group of Job Corps students at centers in Georgia, Mississippi, Oregon, Michigan, and North Dakota.
The emergency relief comes after a separate federal judge in New York granted a preliminary injunction June 25 for a group of Job Corps contractors, similarly finding that the administration should have sought Congressional approval before instructing 99 centers across the country to pause operations.
The lawsuit contends that shuttering the program indefinitely violates the Administrative Procedure Act and the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act of 2014, which mandates the program’s existence.
The ruling is an early win for lawyers and advocates seeking to challenge the Trump administration’s actions under the APA after the Supreme Court limited nationwide injunctions in Trump v. CASA Inc. last month. Friedrich, a Trump appointee, rejected the government’s argument that relief in the case should be limited to the specific plaintiffs, finding that the district court’s remedy isn’t limited by “traditional equitable principles” including party-specific relief.
“The APA permits courts to act directly on agency actions,” Friedrich wrote. “Pre-APA cases confirm that an interim form of vacatur was understood by both courts and Congress to be the ordinary preliminary remedy in a challenge to an unlawful agency action.”
In the New York case, the judge narrowed his injunction to just the Job Corps centers at which the parties were contractors following the CASA ruling, in large part because that complaint initially didn’t make APA claims.
But Friedrich wrote that her injunction need not be limited to the seven Job Corps centers at which the plaintiffs were students, because the lawsuit challenges the DOL’s “across-the-board action under the APA, and not simply the terminations of operator contracts that affected individual Job Corps centers.”
Friedrich also found that DOL failed to provide a necessary notice-and-comment period before moving to shutter Job Corps centers, refuting the DOL’s argument that the action was a “pause” rather than a permanent closure.
“At bottom, DOL’s position is entirely circular: So long as the agency uses the term ‘pause’ and never makes a final decision to ‘formally close’ a center, it is authorized to shutter any Job Corps center indefinitely,” Friedrich wrote. “That cannot be correct.”
Adam Pulver of advocacy group Public Citizen, which is representing the plaintiffs alongside the Southern Poverty Law Center, lauded the ruling in a statement Friday morning and called the DOL’s position “a naked attempt to evade clear law.”
“The Department of Labor’s decision to abruptly close Job Corps centers across the country, ignoring legal requirements and literally putting vulnerable young people on the street, was callous, and as the Judge today agreed, illegal,” he said.
SPLC Deputy Legal Director Scott McCoy urged the administration to reverse course. “Now is the time to double down: Job Corps is a direct investment in our nation’s future which must be protected, expanded, and fully funded to deliver on its promise of equity and upward mobility,” he said in a statement Friday.
Lawyers for the DOL didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The case is Cabrera v. DOL, D.D.C., No. 1:25-cv-01909, preliminary injunction granted on 7/25/25.
To contact the reporters on this story:
To contact the editors responsible for this story: