Pinellas Job Corps Center: Closure, Court Ruling, and 2027 Funding

The Pinellas County Job Corps Center at 500 22nd St. South in St. Petersburg is open and operating. A federal shutdown order issued in May 2025 was blocked by two federal courts, and Congress then funded Job Corps at $1.76 billion through at least June 30, 2027, with language that disallows large-scale campus closures.¹²

What the Center Is

The Pinellas center is a federally funded residential training facility that provides free education, vocational training, and housing to low-income young people ages 16 to 24. Its two dormitories can house up to 300 students. Exceed, LLC, a minority-owned HUBZone small business based in Landover, Maryland, runs the center under a Department of Labor contract worth roughly $55.4 million that runs through November 2026.³

Students can earn a high school diploma or GED while training in one of several career tracks: pre-apprentice carpentry, electrical, and plumbing; facilities maintenance; certified nurse assistant, clinical medical assistant, medical administrative assistant, and pharmacy technician certifications; and a cybersecurity and data analytics program.⁴ Academic support includes tutoring in math and reading, English language learning, and a disability program.⁵ Applicants must be low-income, between 16 and 24, and meet citizenship or residency requirements.⁶

Why the Department of Labor Ordered It Closed

On May 29, 2025, the Department of Labor announced a “phased pause in operations” at all 99 contractor-operated Job Corps centers, ordering them to cease operations by June 30, 2025. Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer cited a “startling number of serious incident reports” along with poor fiscal and performance metrics.⁷

The department pointed to its April 2025 Job Corps Transparency Report, drawn from program year 2023 data. That report put the average graduation rate at 38.6 percent, the average annual cost per student at $80,285, and the average total cost per graduate at $155,601, with post-separation earnings averaging $16,695 annually. It also counted 14,913 serious incident reports in that program year. The department cited a $140 million deficit in program year 2024 and a projected $213 million shortfall for 2025. The shutdown tracked with President Trump’s fiscal year 2026 budget proposal, which sought to eliminate Job Corps funding and fold workforce programs into a consolidated “Make America Skilled Again” grant.⁷

Job Corps was created in 1964 as part of the War on Poverty and serves more than 20,000 students across 123 centers nationwide. The 99 targeted sites were those run by private contractors rather than by federal staff.⁸

What Happened to Students and Staff in St. Petersburg

Roughly 260 to 300 students were enrolled at the Pinellas center when the order came down, with about 250 to 285 living on campus. Between 16 and 20 percent had been homeless or unhoused before enrolling.⁹¹⁰

Staff scrambled to find shelter placements for displaced students and held individual meetings to walk through options. Kamaria Jackson, a student in the certified nurse assistant program who had been facing homelessness before enrolling, said, “It’s back to survival mode, and that is like going place to place right now.” The St. Petersburg center’s graduation rate of 42.3 percent exceeded what the department reported as a 32 percent national average for traditional students.⁹

U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, whose district includes St. Petersburg, sent a formal letter to Secretary Chavez-DeRemer on June 2, 2025, calling the decision “sudden and arbitrary” and based on “narrow and incomplete data.” She noted that Job Corps had not received a funding increase in eight years and questioned the report’s failure to account for pandemic-era disruptions, demanding answers to seven specific questions about its methodology by June 15.¹⁰ Castor said the shutdown would “rip the rug out from under at-risk students” and push hundreds toward homelessness.¹¹

How the Courts Stopped the Shutdown

On June 4, 2025, U.S. District Judge Andrew L. Carter Jr., in the Southern District of New York, issued a temporary restraining order in National Job Corps Association v. Department of Labor. The order blocked the department from enforcing stop-work orders, terminating contracts, or removing students from housing. The plaintiffs included the National Job Corps Association, several center operators, a labor union, and a Job Corps student, and they argued the closures violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act.¹²

On June 25, 2025, Judge Carter converted the restraining order into a nationwide preliminary injunction. He ruled that once Congress authorizes and funds a program, the Department of Labor is not “free to do as it pleases” and must follow congressionally mandated closure protocols under 29 U.S.C. § 3209(j), which require public notice, a comment period, and notification to the local member of Congress. He rejected the department’s argument that it was merely terminating contracts rather than closing centers, calling it a “distinction without difference” given that the agency had halted background checks, ended all 99 contracts, prevented student transfers, and conceded no plans existed for the program’s future.¹³ Attorneys general from 20 states and the District of Columbia filed an amicus brief in support of the injunction; Florida’s attorney general was not among them.¹⁴

After the U.S. Supreme Court restricted lower courts’ use of nationwide injunctions in Trump v. CASA Inc., Judge Carter narrowed his order on July 23, 2025, limiting protection to 31 Job Corps centers and five training centers whose operators were parties to the suit. That left 63 centers temporarily exposed.¹⁵ A separate lawsuit, Cabrera v. U.S. Department of Labor, was filed in D.C. federal court by seven Job Corps students represented by the Public Citizen Litigation Group and the Southern Poverty Law Center. It produced a ruling that restored protections for all 99 centers, with a federal court finding the Department of Labor had “exceeded its authority and violated requirements under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act.”¹⁶

Funding Through 2027

Congress then settled the question through appropriations. The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2026, passed on February 3, 2026, rejected the administration’s proposal to eliminate Job Corps and funded the program at $1.76 billion, consistent with the prior year’s level.¹ The law includes language that explicitly disallows large-scale campus closures and funds Job Corps operations through at least June 30, 2027.² As of mid-2026, National Job Corps Association v. Department of Labor remains an open matter in the Southern District of New York.¹²

What Could Still Change for the Site

The property is federally owned, and city officials have thought about what happens if federal ownership ends. Property records value the complex at more than $25 million. Mayor Ken Welch and city administrators expressed interest in purchasing the 16.3-acre site to prevent displacement of at-risk youth, many of whom aged out of foster care, but federal officials declined to meet with the city while litigation was active. City Council member Brandi Gabbard noted that local governments may have a right of first refusal if federally owned Job Corps properties are ever sold, and Council member Corey Givens Jr. reported that three private developers had already inquired about the site.¹⁷ For now, none of that is in motion: the program is funded, the center is open, and students continue to enroll.

1
U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer. Schumer Successfully Protects Federal Funding for Job Corps
2
National Job Corps Association. FAQ: FY26 Appropriations
3
USAspending.gov. Contract Award: Pinellas County Job Corps Center
4
Pinellas County Job Corps. Career Training Programs
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GovInfo. Pinellas County Job Corps Center
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Pinellas County Job Corps. Pinellas County Job Corps Home
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U.S. Department of Labor. Department of Labor Announces Phased Pause in Contractor-Operated Job Corps Centers
8
Kentucky Lantern. Job Corps Closings Raise Question of Why
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WFLA. Back to Survival Mode: Pinellas Job Corps Students React Amid News of Nationwide Pause
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U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor. Castor Urges Department of Labor to Reverse Job Corps Closure
11
Tampa Bay Times. Job Corps St. Petersburg Shutdown
12
CourtListener. National Job Corps Association v. Department of Labor
13
Justia. National Job Corps Association v. Department of Labor, Preliminary Injunction Order
14
Connecticut Attorney General. Attorney General Tong Files Brief Opposing Unlawful Termination of Job Corps
15
Bloomberg Law. Job Corps Suit: Judge Narrows Injunction After High Court Ruling
16
WUSF. Judge Blocks Job Corps Center Closure at Pinellas, 98 Others Around Nation
17
St. Pete Catalyst. Mayor: St. Pete Could Purchase Embattled Job Corps Site