A California court has just blocked an accreditor from closing the City College of San Francisco until a lawsuit filed by the city attorney goes to trial.

Interestingly, a portion of that judgement hinged on declining student enrollment, which is becoming an issue nationwide.

Supporters of City College of San Francisco have won a temporary reprieve in their quest to prevent the college from losing its accreditation in July.

A San Francisco Superior Court judge on Thursday granted a partial injunction to block the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) from yanking the college’s accreditation until after a lawsuit filed by the city attorney, Dennis Herrera, can be resolved.

Herrera last August filed a legal challenge to the accreditor, claiming that political bias, improper procedures and conflicts of interest improperly influenced its scrutiny of the financially mismanaged college. Faculty unions also filed a separate lawsuit to halt and reverse the accreditor’s actions.

Those lawsuits included motions for injunctions, which can offer legal relief in advance of a trial. An injunction requires the plaintiff to prove that serious harm will occur before the lawsuit is decided.

The commission has called the lawsuits “meritless.” Its office was closed Thursday, and officials could not be reached for comment.

The judge, Curtis E.A. Karnow, rejected the unions’ motions. But he bought the city attorney’s argument, at least in part. He ruled that Herrera has a chance of winning in court, which won’t conclude until after July.

“There is some possibility that the city attorney will ultimately prevail on the merits,” he wrote, “because there is some possibility that he will establish some commission practices have zero utility and so demonstrating their unfairness, or others are illegal.”

City College would be forced to shut down if it lost its accreditation. The college’s closure would be “catastrophic,” Karnow said, and would have an “incalculable” impact on its 80,000 students, faculty, staff and the city’s economy.

In his decision, the judge noted that the college’s enrollment has dipped 20 percent during the accreditation crisis.

“Given the fact that the balance of harm tips sharply, strikingly, indeed overwhelmingly, in favor of the interests represented by the City Attorney, this is enough to authorize preliminary relief,” wrote Karnow.