MANCHESTER, NH – The state’s Job Corps program, due to close Monday – putting dozens of students on the street – got a reprieve, at least temporarily, after a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction that Job Corps programs across the country stay open until a lawsuit is resolved.
The injunction, announced Wednesday, comes three weeks after the judge, Andrew Carter, of the U.S. District Court of New York, issued a temporary restraining order directing the U.S. Department of Labor to stop removing Job Corps students from housing, terminating jobs or otherwise suspending the nationwide program without congressional approval.
The ruling keeps the 123 Job Corps Centers across the U.S. open, at least for now. They were due to close and evict students June 30. That includes New Hampshire’s center, on Dunbarton Road, which enrolls 250 students, many of them who live on-site, and 115 teachers and staff.
The Trump administration last month announced it was “pausing” the program and closing Job Corps Centers, which give students from disadvantaged areas a no-cost path to employment.
Last week, Job Corps students from across the nation filed a class-action lawsuit challenging the federal move. They joined the National Job Corps Association and some of its members, who filed a suit earlier this month, arguing that closing Job Corps is illegal without congressional approval.
Carter, in his ruling announced Wednesday in U.S. District Court, agreed.
“Once Congress has passed legislation stating that a program like the Job Corps must exist, and set aside funding for that program, the DOL is not free to do as it pleases; it is required to enforce the law as intended by Congress,” Carter wrote.
Attorneys general from 20 states, including all of the New England states except New Hampshire, filed an amicus brief earlier this month supporting the NJCA’s suit.
New Hampshire’s Job Corps location, which opened in 2013, houses 40 students who face being homeless if the program shuts down, local officials said.
Overall, it enrolls 250 students, some of whom live on-site and others who commute, according to the state’s Congressional delegation, which sent a joint letter to the U.S. Department of Labor Tuesday supporting the program.
Job Corps supports youth and young adults ages 16-24 who have struggled to finish traditional high school, giving them job training and housing at residential centers, with meals and health care, and helping them find employment. It was created as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s ground-breaking War on Poverty in 1964, officially the Economic Opportunity Act. The aim of the program is to address inequities in education and job training for youth, and give them a foot up so they can become contributing members of the community.
New Hampshire Job Corps students get vocational training as well as pathways to a high school diploma and college certifications and degrees through partnerships with Manchester Community College, Nashua Community College and the New Hampshire Technical Institute.
Two weeks ago, the day before Carter heard the injunction case, New Hampshire Job Corps students and alumni held a news conference at Manchester Community College decrying the federal move to shut it down.
Students said that it gave them a chance they otherwise wouldn’t have to get jobs and “live the American dream.”
In his ruling, Carter took issue with the Labor Department argument that it is “pausing” the program, not shutting it down.
“The way that the DOL is shuttering operations and the context in which the shuttering is taking place make it clear that the DOL is actually attempting to close the centers,” Carter wrote.
He also said that the move harms students who are served by the program. One, who is a plaintiff in the lawsuit and is enrolled in the program in New York, said she would lose the progress she’s made toward earning a culinary arts certificate. She “will immediately be plunged into homelessness,” Carter wrote, adding that it’s more than the “minor upheaval” for students that Labor Department lawyers had cited in their arguments.
New Hampshire opened its only Job Corps Center in 2015 at 943 Dunbarton Road. It was the last state in the U.S. to establish a center. The opening at the $35 million complex was attended by U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, who had pushed for years to get it established, as well as then-U.S. Senator, now Gov. Kelly Ayotte. Maggie Hassan, governor at the time, and now a U.S. senator, was also there.
Ayotte has not commented on the federal move to shut the center down, and she and Attorney General John Formella have not issued a statement on why New Hampshire hasn’t joined the rest of New England in the amicus brief supporting keeping the program alive.
Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said in a May 29 statement the program is being phased out because “a startling number of serious incident reports and our in-depth fiscal analysis reveal the program is no longer achieving the intended outcomes that students deserve.”
But program advocates said that the issues described by the Labor Department are overblown, and that the program provides benefits beyond what it costs.
Judy Krassowski, on the New Hampshire Jobs Corps Alumni Facebook page, posted earlier this month that “everything has been running well for our NH center, moving invested students forward through their programs, graduating, getting really good jobs in their trades, getting HS Diplomas, certifications through OSHA, FEMA, TABE (assurance that students can read and calculate as adults should be able to do, handle paperwork, directions) and whatnot, so it didn’t make sense that this would indeed happen.”
Krassowski maintained students were being well prepared for the workforce.
In their letter Tuesday, the state congressional delegation said that the New Hampshire Job Corps Center is essential to the state’s economy, with an estimated economic impact of more than $21 million a year.
“The center’s closure would have a grave and lasting impact on the state’s economic growth and workforce pipeline,” wrote Shaheen, Hassan, U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas, D-1, and U.S. Rep. Maggie Goodlander, D-2, all Democrats.
“Given the vital role that Job Corps plays in New Hampshire and throughout the country, we respectfully urge you to reconsider your pause of Job Corps operations and cease efforts to eliminate the program,” the letter said. “We have a shared interest in improving outcomes for Job Corps students, prioritizing their safety, and preventing any waste that may exist in the Job Corps program, and we urge you to work with Congress to advance these goals.”
Last week, Shaheen joined a bipartisan group of Appropriations Committee members in a letter to Chavez-DeRemer, urging the DOL to reverse its decision to end close Job Corps centers.