A federal judge on Monday ordered the Education Department to restart spending programs in eight Democrat-led states that had sued over President Trump’s spending pause.

Judge Myong J. Joun, a Biden appointee who sits in Massachusetts, said the states had been counting on the money and the decision to cut it off likely violates federal spending laws.

He issued a temporary restraining order directing the money from two grant programs, the Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP) and Supporting Effective Educator Development (SEED), be restarted for California, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Wisconsin.

The judge said the Trump administration took too blunt an approach to shutting down the spending.

“The record reflects that there was no individualized analysis of any of the programs; rather, it appears that all TQP and SEED grants were simply terminated,” he wrote.

He said the effects of the cancellations are already being felt.

The College of New Jersey had to cancel its urban teacher residency program, and Boston’s public schools lost three employees from its program to train multilingual teachers.

• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.