The layoffs call into question how agency will be able to handle major operations such as student loans, FAFSA, the Nation’s Report Card and civil rights complaints.

The lawsuit claims that decimating the agency’s Office for Civil Rights will leave it unable to address issues of discrimination at school — violating the equal protection clause of the Fifth Amendment.

The Education Department’s civil rights branch is losing nearly half its staff in the Trump administration’s layoffs, effectively gutting an office that already faced a backlog of thousands of complai