\n<\/p>\n
A judge is temporarily blocking the Trump administration from carrying out its latest round of federal employee layoffs at most agencies.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cboth illegal and in excess of authority,\u201d and granted a temporary restraining order blocking most agencies from proceeding with those layoffs.<\/p>\n
A temporary restraining order granted by Illston bars the Trump administration from \u201ctaking any action to issue any reduction-in-force notices to federal employees \u2026 during or because of the federal government shutdown.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is also far from normal for an administration to fire line-level civilian employees during a <![CDATA[]]><\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n The ruling also prohibits agencies from \u201ctaking any further action to administer or implement RIF notices\u201d 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.<\/p>\n Illston is giving defendant agencies two business days to provide a list of all RIF plans, \u201cactual or imminent.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n The court\u2019s ruling also blocks upcoming RIFs that are still in the works.\u00a0 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\u2019s plans thus far, and that\u00a0more layoffs are coming.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019ll get much higher,\u201d Vought said on Wednesday on the Charlie Kirk Show, which broadcast from the White House.\u00a0\u201cI think we\u2019ll probably end up being somewhere north of 10,000.\u201d<\/p>\n Vought said the shutdown is slowing down implementation of some White House priorities, but said the administration, during the funding lapse, has been \u201cvery aggressive, where we can be, in shutting down the bureaucracy.\u201d<\/p>\n <![CDATA[]]><\/p>\n \u201cOne of the problems of a government shutdown, it slows down the administration. So the administration can\u2019t do as much of what it was doing on behalf of the American people, because it\u2019s in a shutdown. And we, to the best of our ability, want to minimize that slowdown in momentum,\u201d he said. \u201cBut 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Agencies typically don\u2019t carry out layoffs during a shutdown, but the Office of Personnel Management updated its guidance<\/a>, exempting agency RIF procedures from the shutdown.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cCongress is saying we\u2019re not going to fund these programs by not passing the Republican continuing resolution. So if there\u2019s no funding for these programs, what would you have us do? Is it not to make an assumption that you don\u2019t intend to fund these in the future? And so, we\u2019re then doing the normal, legal authorities that were given to us \u2014 and our focus, time and attention \u2014 to be able to go after and prioritize the RIFs, as opposed to the deregulatory agenda or any of the other things that we\u2019re normally tasked with at OMB,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The Trump administration is expected to appeal the district court\u2019s decision. Appeals courts have often cited the Supreme Court\u2019s ruling in July that<\/a> allowed the administration to proceed with an earlier round of layoffs.<\/p>\n But with the latest round of layoffs happending under the government shutdown, Illston said evidence suggests that OMB and OPM \u201chave taken advantage of the lapse in government spending and government functioning to assume that all bets are off \u2014 that the laws don\u2019t apply to them anymore, and that they can impose the structures that they like, on a government situation that they don\u2019t like.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump administration officials told the court on Friday<\/a> that RIF notices went out to about 4,200 federal employees. But it revised those figures on Tuesday, <\/a>after agencies rescinded hundreds of RIF notices.<\/p>\n \u201cThere have been many errors made. I keep getting revised declarations under oath from people who say, \u2018Well, I didn\u2019t mean the last one. I was off by about 2,000, because it\u2019s a fluid situation.\u2019 And what it is, is a situation where things are being done before they\u2019re being thought through,\u201d Illston said.<\/p>\n Justice Department attorneys representing the Trump administration told the court that many agencies named in the lawsuit \u201chave not made a final decision whether or not to issue a RIF.\u201d<\/p>\n <![CDATA[]]><\/p>\n \u201cThe agencies, as we\u2019ve seen, are making their own determination of whether a RIF is appropriate,\u201d Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Hedges told the court.<\/p>\n But Danielle Leonard, an attorney representing the unions leading the lawsuit, told the court that the RIF decisions \u201chave already been made\u201d not by agencies, but by the president and White House officials.<\/p>\n \u201cThe decision here has been made. It has been made at the highest levels of government. It\u2019s been made by OMB Director Vought to unlawfully order agencies across the federal government to RIF their employees. If they haven\u2019t decided yet exactly the timing, that matters not for our ability to challenge and enjoin this,\u201d Leonard said.<\/p>\n Illston said some impacted employees haven\u2019t gotten their RIF notices yet, because the notices were sent to work email accounts they\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very much ready, fire, aim on most of these programs. It has a human cost, which is really why we\u2019re here today,\u201d she said. It\u2019s a human cost that cannot be tolerated.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday that the shutdown \u201cshouldn\u2019t have happened,\u201d but said his administration is using the shutdown as an opportunity to close down federal programs \u201cthat we wanted to close up, or that we never wanted to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe are closing up Democrat programs that we disagree with, and they\u2019re never going to open again,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n If you would like to contact this reporter about recent changes in the federal government, please email\u00a0<\/strong>jheckman@federalnewsnetwork.com<\/strong><\/a>, or reach out on Signal at jheckman.29<\/strong><\/p>\n Copyright https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v8.0&appId=228478281369433&autoLogAppEvents=1<\/a> 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 \u201cboth illegal and in excess of … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6368,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Court-blocks-Trump-administrations-latest-mass-layoffs-for-federal-employees.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6367"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6369,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6367\/revisions\/6369"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
government shutdown as a way to punish the opposing political party. But this is precisely what
President Trump has announced he is doing,\u201d Illston said in her full, written opinion<\/a> posted Wednesday evening.<\/p>\n
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