Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell is suing the Trump Administration in an effort to stop large-scale layoffs within the U.S. Department of Education.

The lawsuit, filed in 20 states and Washington D.C., argues the scope of the layoffs is so large that Education Department would be unable to function, leaving students and teachers to deal with the fallout.

“The Department touches nearly every aspect of education, and losing it would deprive students, especially low-income students and students with disabilities, of the resources and support they need,” Campbell said.

There are more than one million K-12 students in Massachusetts, and Campbell accused the Trump Administration of using them as political pawns. She is concerned that the cuts, which could eventually leave the Education Department with half its workforce, could have wide-ranging consequences in classrooms across Massachusetts.

“Only Congress can abolish an agency it creates, and each time Congress has been faced with the option to abolish the Department of Education, it has chosen not to do so,” Campbell said. “The President has shown nothing but blatant disregard for the rule of law, and sadly, cruelty towards our people, and in this case, our young people.”

Recently-confirmed Education Secretary Linda McMahon has said the Department’s ‘final mission’ is to eliminate bureaucratic bloat and leave authority to the states, but opponents in Massachusetts question what this means for the millions of dollars they rely on from Washington, D.C. each year to support special education, school meals and other programs. Some professors like Joanna Gonsalves of Salem State University also fear public colleges and universities could become more expensive as federal funding for grants, work study programs and loans becomes more uncertain.

“The UMass systems are feeling it, about 14 percent of the funding at UMass campuses come from federal grants,” Gonsalves said. “So that means grad students, lab work that gets done, equipment, as well as some of the faculty salaries, faculty and staff, so they are really worried.”

Gonsalves is also the president of the Massachusetts State College Association, which is joining the Massachusetts Teachers Association in urging Governor Maura Healey and the Massachusetts Legislature to establish a reserve fund to protect public higher education from cuts at the federal level.

MTA has asked state budget writers to use $200 million from the Fair Share revenue surplus fund to establish the reserve, which the union said could be used for faculty and staff wages.