President Donald Trump pledged to downsize the federal bureaucracy and suggested eliminating the Department of Education (DOE) altogether, but, despite his best efforts, a federal judge is blocking the president from following through on that promise.

Judge Myong Joun of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts issued a preliminary injunction Thursday, barring the president from downsizing the Department of Education (DOE) and demanding that his administration rehire thousands of federal workers who had been dismissed from the department. “This case arises out of an attempt by [the Trump administration] to shut down the Department without Congressional approval,” Joun wrote in his order.

In March, the Trump administration announced mass layoffs at the DOE, dismissing over 2,000 employees. A March 20 executive order laid out the president’s plan to dismantle the DOE. “Unfortunately, the experiment of controlling American education through Federal programs and dollars — and the unaccountable bureaucracy those programs and dollars support — has plainly failed our children, our teachers, and our families,” the president wrote. He continued, “Closing the Department of Education would provide children and their families the opportunity to escape a system that is failing them.” He added, “Ultimately, the Department of Education’s main functions can, and should, be returned to the States.”

The executive order directed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities while ensuring the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely,” as permitted by law. Although governed by the executive branch, the DOE was established by congressional statute in 1979.

Following the layoffs and the executive order, a coalition of school districts, unions, and state attorneys general filed lawsuits to block the Trump administration’s attempt to downsize the DOE. In his Thursday order, Joun cited former DOE employees, teachers, and unions who insisted that shutting down the department would be catastrophic for public education across the country. The judge claimed that the DOE was “already struggling to meet its goals” prior to the layoffs, which he predicted “will likely cripple the Department.”

“Defendants do acknowledge, as they must, that the Department cannot be shut down without Congress’s approval,” Joun wrote, noting that the statutory basis for the DOE prohibits the Trump administration from doing away with it of the president’s own volition. Instead, the Trump administration has focused its efforts on reducing the department to such a small size that it effectively becomes irrelevant. “The idea that Defendants’ actions are merely a ‘reorganization’ is plainly not true,” Joun wrote. He concluded that “a preliminary injunction is warranted to return the Department to the status quo such that it can comply with its statutory obligations.”

In comments to The Washington Stand, DOE Deputy Assistant Secretary for Communications Madi Biedermann confirmed that the Trump administration “will immediately challenge this on an emergency basis.” Bidermann explained, “Once again, a far-left judge has dramatically overstepped his authority, based on a complaint from biased plaintiffs, and issued an injunction against the obviously lawful efforts to make the Department of Education more efficient and functional for the American people.” She continued, “President Trump and the Senate-confirmed secretary of Education clearly have the authority to make decisions about agency reorganization efforts, not an unelected judge with a political axe to grind. This ruling is not in the best interest of American students or families.”