Amid concerns for low-income youths facing housing instability, Attorney General Nick Brown has joined forces with attorneys general from 18 other states, rallying behind the Job Corps program after its abrupt cancellation by the Trump Administration. According to a recent report from the Washington State Attorney General's office, this coalition has filed an amicus brief to contest the administration's decision, stressing the program's critical role in providing education, vocational training, and safe housing to its participants.
The legal challenge, which includes states like Nevada and Washington, underscores the potentially devastating outcomes on the immediate horizon for tens of thousands of young Americans currently enrolled. "In the sixty years since Congress created Job Corps, millions of young Americans from low-income backgrounds have been served by the program’s unique combination of education, training, housing, healthcare and community," the brief outlined. It appears the attempt to quickly terminate Job Corps is set not only to disrupt educational pursuits but also to potentially thrust previously unhoused or foster care-involved youths back into precarity.
Such an interruption could have serious ramifications for specific locales, including the Cascades Job Corps Center in Sedro-Woolley, Washington, and the Tongue Point Job Corps Center in Astoria, Oregon. The brief has been filed under the case title National Job Corps Association et al. v. Department of Labor et al. in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Friday's amicus filing carries a poignant message from this coalition of states to the federal government: an injunction is necessary not simply to uphold the law but to meaningfully protect vulnerable populations. These attorneys general hold firm in their belief that the administration does not possess the right to arbitrarily terminate federally mandated programs based upon its opposition to them, further reinforced by saying, "the Trump Administration cannot violate federal law and the Constitution by terminating congressionally mandated programs it opposes."
