Plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed Friday claim the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights cannot fulfill its mandated duties after nearly half the department’s staff was laid off this week, as President Donald Trump moves to shut down the agency entirely.

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 complaints from students and families across the country.

Under Trump’s directive the Department of Education laid off half its staff. The lawsuit argues Trump has no authority to make such drastic changes.