Court blocks Trump administration’s latest mass layoffs for federal employees

A judge is temporarily blocking the Trump administration from carrying out its latest round of federal employee layoffs at most agencies.

Judge Susan Illston with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled Wednesday that widespread reduction-in-force notices sent to about 4,000 employees last Friday were “both illegal and in excess of authority,” and granted a temporary restraining order blocking most agencies from proceeding with those layoffs.

A temporary restraining order granted by Illston bars the Trump administration from “taking any action to issue any reduction-in-force notices to federal employees … during or because of the federal government shutdown.”

“It is also far from normal for an administration to fire line-level civilian employees during a
government shutdown as a way to punish the opposing political party. But this is precisely what
President Trump has announced he is doing,” Illston said in her full, written opinion posted Wednesday evening.

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The order specifically covers all federal programs, projects, and activities with any bargaining unit members represented by the two government employee unions leading the lawsuit. Those unions represent federal employees at more than 30 agencies.

The ruling also prohibits agencies from “taking any further action to administer or implement RIF notices” issued on Oct. 10. That means agencies can no longer require federal employees to perform work to further administer or implement RIF notices during the shutdown.

Illston is giving defendant agencies two business days to provide a list of all RIF plans, “actual or imminent.”

President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday that his administration was already planning to release of list of additional program closures this Friday.

The court’s ruling also blocks upcoming RIFs that are still in the works.  Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought said the 4,000 RIF notices already sent to federal employees were a snapshot of the administration’s plans thus far, and that more layoffs are coming.

“I think it’ll get much higher,” Vought said on Wednesday on the Charlie Kirk Show, which broadcast from the White House. “I think we’ll probably end up being somewhere north of 10,000.”

Vought said the shutdown is slowing down implementation of some White House priorities, but said the administration, during the funding lapse, has been “very aggressive, where we can be, in shutting down the bureaucracy.”

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“One of the problems of a government shutdown, it slows down the administration. So the administration can’t do as much of what it was doing on behalf of the American people, because it’s in a shutdown. And we, to the best of our ability, want to minimize that slowdown in momentum,” he said. “But one of the things we want to do is, if there are policy opportunities to downsize the scope of the federal government, we want to use those opportunities.”

Agencies typically don’t carry out layoffs during a shutdown, but the Office of Personnel Management updated its guidance, exempting agency RIF procedures from the shutdown.

Vought said Congress gave the Trump administration tacit approval to pursue these layoffs once lawmakers failed to pass a stopgap spending bill before Oct. 1.

“Congress is saying we’re not going to fund these programs by not passing the Republican continuing resolution. So if there’s no funding for these programs, what would you have us do? Is it not to make an assumption that you don’t intend to fund these in the future? And so, we’re then doing the normal, legal authorities that were given to us — and our focus, time and attention — to be able to go after and prioritize the RIFs, as opposed to the deregulatory agenda or any of the other things that we’re normally tasked with at OMB,” he said.

The Trump administration is expected to appeal the district court’s decision. Appeals courts have often cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in July that allowed the administration to proceed with an earlier round of layoffs.

But with the latest round of layoffs happending under the government shutdown, Illston said evidence suggests that OMB and OPM “have taken advantage of the lapse in government spending and government functioning to assume that all bets are off — that the laws don’t apply to them anymore, and that they can impose the structures that they like, on a government situation that they don’t like.”

Trump administration officials told the court on Friday that RIF notices went out to about 4,200 federal employees. But it revised those figures on Tuesday, after agencies rescinded hundreds of RIF notices.

“There have been many errors made. I keep getting revised declarations under oath from people who say, ‘Well, I didn’t mean the last one. I was off by about 2,000, because it’s a fluid situation.’ And what it is, is a situation where things are being done before they’re being thought through,” Illston said.

Justice Department attorneys representing the Trump administration told the court that many agencies named in the lawsuit “have not made a final decision whether or not to issue a RIF.”

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“The agencies, as we’ve seen, are making their own determination of whether a RIF is appropriate,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Hedges told the court.

But Danielle Leonard, an attorney representing the unions leading the lawsuit, told the court that the RIF decisions “have already been made” not by agencies, but by the president and White House officials.

“The decision here has been made. It has been made at the highest levels of government. It’s been made by OMB Director Vought to unlawfully order agencies across the federal government to RIF their employees. If they haven’t decided yet exactly the timing, that matters not for our ability to challenge and enjoin this,” Leonard said.

Illston said some impacted employees haven’t gotten their RIF notices yet, because the notices were sent to work email accounts they’re unable to access, with agency IT staff furloughed or laid off. Agencies have also furloughed or sent RIF notices to human resources employees who would provide guidance amid these layoffs.

“It’s very much ready, fire, aim on most of these programs. It has a human cost, which is really why we’re here today,” she said. It’s a human cost that cannot be tolerated.”

Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday that the shutdown “shouldn’t have happened,” but said his administration is using the shutdown as an opportunity to close down federal programs “that we wanted to close up, or that we never wanted to happen.”

“We are closing up Democrat programs that we disagree with, and they’re never going to open again,” he said.

If you would like to contact this reporter about recent changes in the federal government, please email jheckman@federalnewsnetwork.com, or reach out on Signal at jheckman.29

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