U.S. District Judge David Ezra this afternoon denied two motions for a restraining order to prevent the Department of Education’s plan to furlough public school teachers starting tomorrow.

Earlier, Ezra said that the court filings gave him a “limited period of time to review the motions” but he decided to hold the hearing “because of the seriousness of the matter for both sides.”
Ezra said that the hearing is not to decide the merits of the lawsuit but to determine whether an injunction is appropriate.
About 60 people were in the courtroom to hear lawyers argue the need to halt the furloughs. Hawaii State Teachers Association leaders, state Attorney General Mark Bennett and Schools Superintendent Pat Hamamoto were also in attendance.
Attorney Carl Varady told the court today that he represents special-ed students who need to go to school on Fridays as usual because of “social delays and language delays that require them to interact with other children.”
Varady argued that the DOE could have put the furlough days at the end of the school year, which would give the state legislators and federal officials “time to find a solution... and plan for some sort of rational substitution.”
Attorney Eric Seitz told Ezra that the state argument of funding problems is the same that it made 16 years ago in the Felix consent decree case.
That argument resulted in 12 years of costly litigation until the state was forced to “live up to its obligations,” Seitz said.
Seitz said the state’s argument again is, “We don’t have the money to do what we are required to do.”
Bennett told Ezra that "our nation is in the throes of the most serious fiscal crisis since the Great Depression” and the most serious fiscal situation in state history.