This story is part of our Quick Hits series. This series will bring you breaking news and short updates from throughout the state.
Job Corps centers across the country will keep providing career-path training for youth for now, thanks to a class action lawsuit.
This comes after the U.S. Department of Labor tried to indefinitely “pause” operations at 99 centers in late May, citing a multimillion-dollar budget deficit.
That would have shuttered the Wind River site in Riverton, Wyo. and eight others across the Mountain West.
But federal judges have largely kept them open — with a lot of whiplash for centers.
A District of Columbia court granted a preliminary injunction request from seven students on July 25, keeping all 99 centers open. The judge argued the Labor Department didn’t follow the right procedure to shutter the program.
This came a day after a New York judge ruled that the Labor Department could close more than two-thirds of centers, including the Wyoming one, since the service providers in those places weren’t plaintiffs in the case.
That judge had initially protected centers nationwide. But the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that these kinds of injunctions cannot apply universally, only to the parties involved. Justices said, however, that class action lawsuits can be used to apply rulings countrywide.
Job Corps centers will now remain open, but the labor department can continue to fight the rulings. All the uncertainty has led many students to graduate early or choose to leave the program.
As of June 9, 30% of students had already left the program nationwide, according to the latest available data provided by the National Job Corps Association, one of the parties suing to keep operations going.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise StateCRED Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
