A federal judge on Wednesday blocked President Trump’s efforts to lay off thousands of federal employees amid the government shutdown, for now.
U.S. District Judge Susan Illston, an appointee of former President Clinton, sided with government employee unions in temporarily barring the administration from carrying out the reductions in force (RIFs) that were expected to impact more than 4,000 workers.
At a hearing Wednesday, Illston said before arguments even began that she believed the plaintiffs would ultimately prevail in demonstrating that the administration’s efforts, which appear to be “politically motivated,” are illegal and exceed its authority.
“The evidence suggests that the Office of Management and Budget, OMB, and the Office of Personnel Management, OPM, have taken advantage of the lapse in government spending, in government functioning, to assume that 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,” Illston said.
Her order directs the Trump administration not to issue any new RIF notices or take any steps to implement the notices issued Friday or later against employees who are represented by the unions that sued. It further directs the government to provide her with an exact count of actual or imminent layoffs by Friday.
The unions sued just before the shutdown began, contending the Trump administration’s plan to implement permanent firings instead of temporary furloughs with later back pay is unlawful.
They alleged the OMB’s suggestion in a memo last month for agencies to “use this opportunity” to consider layoffs for programs with lapsed funding that do not align with Trump’s priorities misunderstands the law governing shutdowns.
Danielle Leonard, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, pointed to past comments by OMB Director Russell Vought that endorsed leaving career civil servants “traumatically affected” by their jobs, as proof of the harm the administration sought to impose with the layoffs.
“That’s exactly what they are doing: trauma,” Leonard said. “The emotional distress of being told you are being fired after an already exceptionally difficult year for federal employees.”
“In this context, it is traumatic; it is distressing,” she added.
As of Tuesday evening, eight departments planned to lay off workers, though the numbers continue to evolve.
The highest number of cuts was expected at the Department of Treasury, which planned to eliminate 1,337 employees, followed by 982 layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and some 600 at the Department of Commerce.
At HHS, the figure was previously much higher. Chief Human Capital Officers Thomas Nagy wrote in a declaration Tuesday that RIF notices were improperly sent to nearly 800 employees because of “data discrepancies and processing errors.”
Leonard, however, expressed skepticism that the walkback amounted to a “coding error,” suggesting that some of those fired were actively working on measles outbreaks and “someone realized what a poor decision that was.”
Vought had said earlier Wednesday that the administration could ultimately lay off more than 10,000 federal employees during the shutdown.
Illston pressed the Department of Justice (DOJ) to present arguments about the legality of the administration’s efforts to slash its workforce while the shutdown persists, but the government said it was not prepared to address the merits of the layoffs at this early stage of the lawsuit.
“But it’s happening,” the judge pushed back. “This hatchet is falling on the heads of employees all across the nation, and you’re not even prepared to address whether that’s legal.”
DOJ lawyer Elizabeth Hedges argued that the judge could throw out the unions’ lawsuit and request for emergency relief without determining the legality of the Trump administration’s efforts, contending that the harms at play could be remedied by agency adjudicators like the Merit Systems Protection Board.
“We’re still dealing with classically reparable harms, of the sort that the Supreme Court has said are reparable — loss of employment, loss of benefits, loss of wages,” Hedges said.
When the DOJ lawyer concluded her presentation of the administration’s position, Illston provided another chance to give the answers she was seeking.
“I just want to be clear: You’re not making any statement concerning the government’s position on the merits of this, whether these RIFs are legal or not?” the judge asked.
“Not today, your honor,” Hedges said.
Illston said at the start of the hearing that statements by administration officials, including Trump, pinning the shutdown layoffs on Democrats seemed to run afoul of the laws that dictate how RIFs must be conducted.
Trump said Friday in the Oval Office that the RIF notices would be “Democrat-oriented.”
“Because we figure, you know, they started this thing, so they should be Democrat-oriented,” the president said.
The judge also pointed to OMB’s memo blaming Democrats for the government shutdown as a reason the RIFs seemed to be “politically motivated.”
However, she returned to the federal employees who stand to lose their jobs as reason for swiftly blocking further layoffs, for now.
“It’s a human cost that cannot be tolerated,” Illston said.
—Updated at 3:39 p.m. EDT
