The Education Department plans to lay off over 1,300 of its more than 4,000 employees as part of a reorganization that’s seen as a prelude to President Donald Trump’s plan to shut down the agency.

The Trump administration had already begun whittling the agency’s staff. But after Tuesday’s layoffs, the Education Department will sit at roughly half of its previous 4,100 staff members.

A group of Democratic state attorneys general on Thursday filed a lawsuit seeking to block Republican U.S. President Donald Trump's administration from dismantling the U.S. Department of Education and halt wide-spread layoffs at the agency that were announced this week.

The suit from 20 states and the District of Columbia comes two days after the federal agency fired more than 1,300 employees.