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.

A lawsuit filed on Friday alleges the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) is unable to fulfill its mandated obligations due to Trump administration changes as it seek to

WASHINGTON (AP) — 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 nation.