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The Trump administration on Wednesday lost a bid to lift a federal judge’s order temporarily blocking the U.S. Education Department from laying off about half of its employees.

The administration had asked the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston to lift the preliminary injunction issued by a Massachusetts District Court judge that stayed the large “reduction in force” at the department announced by Education Secretary Linda McMahon in March.

A three-judge panel on that appeals court rejected that effort Wednesday in a 26-page decision.

The Trump administration could ask the Supreme Court to lift the order.

But if the injunction remains in place, the Education Department would be blocked from drastically cutting its workforce as lawsuits challenging the layoffs play out in the district court and appellate courts.

The lawsuits were filed by 21 states, five labor organizations, and two school districts that allege that the reduction in force violates the U.S. Constitution and the Administrative Procedure Act.

“What is at stake in this case, the District Court found, was whether a nearly half-century-old cabinet department would be permitted to carry out its statutorily assigned functions or prevented from doing so by a mass termination of employees aimed at implementing the effective closure of that department,” wrote Chief Judge David Barron in the appeals court’s decision.

“Given the extensive findings made by the District Court and the absence of any contrary evidence having been submitted by the appellants, we conclude that the appellants’ stay motion does not warrant our interfering with the ordinary course of appellate adjudication in the face of what the record indicates would be the apparent consequences of our doing so,” Barron wrote.