A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s wholesale dismantling of AmeriCorps, an independent federal agency that facilitates public community service opportunities, reversing the termination of its grants and volunteer network across 24 Democratic-led states.

In an opinion explaining the ruling, Judge Deborah L. Boardman of the Federal District Court in Maryland wrote that the various programs funded through AmeriCorps — which include public health, veteran transition services, conservation and environmental protection, and education support — have come to fill a void in government services in many parts of the country.

The sudden suspension of those programs, which she emphasized was done the behest of the Department of Government Efficiency, left states marooned and struggling to provide for their residents, she concluded.

The government had argued that if it were ordered to restore the grant programs, but eventually prevailed in the case, it could stand to lose millions of dollars that would be impossible to recover.

To underscore her point about the critical nature of the agency’s work, Judge Boardman reversed that logic.

“If, at the end of this litigation, the government is vindicated and cannot recover the funds that Congress appropriated for national service,” she wrote, “the funds will have been spent on improving the lives of everyday Americans: veterans, people with substance use disorder, people with disabilities, children with learning differences, Indigenous communities, people impacted by natural disasters and people trying to survive below the poverty line, Any harm the defendants might face if the agency actions are enjoined pales in comparison to the concrete harms that the states and the communities served by AmeriCorps programs have suffered and will continue to suffer.”