A federal judge has issued an injunction against the Gardendale Board of Education, which temporarily keeps the new system from going forward with a lawsuit against the Jefferson County Schools, in yet another development in the increasingly contentious separation process between the two systems,

U.S. District Judge Madeline Haikala handed down the injunction late on Wednesday afternoon, in reaction to Tuesday filing of the suit by Gardendale, which accused JefCoEd of using delaying tactics to keep the breakaway system from taking control of its schools in time for the 2015-16 academic year.

Haikala enjoined Gardendale from further action until a hearing set for next Tuesday. That hearing concerns the original report filed by JefCoEd last week with the federal court, as required by the system’s decades-old desegregation case of Stout and United States v. Jefferson County Board of Education, et al. Haikala currently presides over the case.

In Tuesday’s hearing, Haikala could decide to extend her injunction, or extend it further.

The JefCoEd report said that the Gardendale’s breakaway system would take in mainly white students, and would adversely affect the county schools’ efforts to provide educational facilities and opportunities for minority students, and therefore greatly affect JefCoEd’s chances of achieving unitary status — ending the supervision by Haikala and her predecessors from the Stout case.

Haikala’s injunction is the third legal action in the past six days in the messy divorce between JefCoEd and the new Gardendale City Schools.