WASHINGTON 

The US Supreme Court allowed President Donald Trump to move forward Monday with efforts to dismantle the Department of Education, overturning a lower court ruling that had blocked mass layoffs and other efforts to shrink the agency.

The decision allows the administration, for now, to move forward with mass firings that eliminated nearly half of the agency’s workforce in March, along with other measures like transferring control of the federal student loan portfolio.

The Supreme Court's majority offered no explanation for its decision, while the three liberal justices dissented, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor authoring the dissenting opinion.

"The Department is responsible for providing critical funding and services to millions of students and scores of schools across the country. Lifting the District Court's injunction will unleash untold harm, delaying or denying educational opportunities and leaving students to suffer from discrimination, sexual assault, and other civil rights violations without the federal resources Congress intended," Sotomayor wrote.

"The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naive. But either way, the threat to our Constitution's separation of powers is grave," she added.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon welcomed the ruling, saying the department will move forward with its workforce reduction and continue its efforts to shift educational authority back to the states.

"Today, the Supreme Court again confirmed the obvious: the President of the United States, as the head of the Executive Branch, has the ultimate authority to make decisions about staffing levels, administrative organization and day-to-day operations of federal agencies," McMahon said in a statement.

Although she hailed the ruling as a "significant win" for students and families, McMahon said "it is a shame that the highest court in the land had to step in to allow President Trump to advance the reforms Americans elected him to deliver using the authorities granted to him by the U.S. Constitution."