This story was updated at 4:40 p.m. on Oct. 28 with additional details following a breaking news alert
The Trump administration’s latest round of federal employee layoffs will remain on hold, for now.
A federal judge in San Francisco granted a preliminary injunction on Tuesday that will indefinitely block the Trump administration from proceeding with widespread reductions-in-force for about 4,000 federal employees, or issuing new RIF notices, while the case proceeds through the court.
U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston said her preliminary injunction will block the Trump administration from issuing any more RIF notices or implementing RIF notices that have been issued “because of the shutdown.” The preliminary injunction, however, will not block RIF notices that were sent before the shutdown.
Illston said in a hearing Tuesday at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California that the driving force of these RIFs has been “political retribution.”
“The president said so,” she said.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly said that his administration is targeting “Democrat agencies” through layoffs during the government shutdown. The Office of Management and Budget has also directed agencies, during the shutdown, to consider layoffs in programs that lack alternative funding sources and that don’t align with the president’s priorities.
Illston’s preliminary injunction comes after she granted a temporary restraining order on Oct. 15, which blocked the Trump administration from carrying out its shutdown RIFs for two weeks.
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.
Illston said OMB and OPM’s actions were also “likely unlawful,” after telling agencies that statutory mandates to carry out certain programs no longer apply during a government shutdown.
Justice Department attorneys representing the Trump administration, up until now, declined to defend the merits of the shutdown RIFs, and instead sought to get the case thrown out for procedural reasons.
Plaintiff unions representing federal employees have argued that RIF planning should not be exempt from a government shutdown, because it does not meet the criteria of protecting life or property.
But DOJ Senior Counsel Michael Velchik said there are “more reasons during a lapse in appropriations to engage in RIFs, not fewer.”
“If you don’t have money coming in, you should be looking for ways to cut costs. This is true for a household, for a firm or for the government,” he said.
Velchik said furloughed employees are “incurring future obligations to the federal taxpayer, who will then have to pay back wages for these individuals who are not working.”
“It’s not just that they’re not working on their normal duties, but they’re working on duties that agency leaders have determined are no longer advancing presidential priorities,” Velchik said.
Velchik said agencies deciding which employees are essential to keep working during a government shutdown helps “crystallize for policymakers what really should we be spending the American taxpayers’ dollars on.”
“Morally, this is the right thing to do, and it’s the democratic thing to do,” he said. “I mean, the president was elected on this specific platform. When the American people selected someone known, above all else, for his eloquence in communicating to employees that you’re fired, this is what they voted for.”
Velchik also echoed an argument made by the Office of Management and Budget that Congress allowing a government shutdown to occur means programs without funding are no longer statutorily mandated.
“Congress has not appropriated money for those programs to be carried out,” he said. “If Congress says, ‘no money shall go to this,’ that’s a limitation.”
“Currently, Congress has not appropriated monies for certain activities. It has the opportunity to consider legislation that would appropriate monies going forward, as well as provide back pay retrospectively,” he added.
OMB Director Russ Vought said earlier this month that Congress gave the Trump administration tacit approval to pursue 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?” Vought said.
Danielle Leonard, an attorney representing the unions leading the lawsuit, said a lapse in congressional appropriations is not the same as the elimination of statutory authority, because “Congress will surely enact appropriations at some point in time.”
“There’s a lapse in appropriations. That could justify — and does justify, under the law — furloughing employees. It does not justify permanently eliminating their positions. There has been no congressional authorization of that,” Leonard said. “There has been no permanent removal of statutory authority.”
“Counsel is arguing that if Congress lets government funding lapse for one day, the president can fire the entire federal government. That is absurd,” she added.
The preliminary injunction now covers eight plaintiff unions. The case originally protected members of the American Federation of Government Employees and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees from layoffs.
Leonard said plaintiffs have no current plans to add more unions to the lawsuit, and that those actions were only necessary, once the Interior Department told the court it was planning to “imminently” send RIF notices to over 2,000 of its employees.
“It was only when plaintiffs discovered that, that we had to scramble and move very quickly to protect the employees represented by unions within DOI we did that as quickly as possible,” Leonard said.
Interior officials said the RIFs are not related to the ongoing government shutdown, but happened to coincide with it. Leonard said the department has been able to send RIF notices since July, when the Supreme Court gave the Trump administration broad authority to proceed with layoffs, but waited until the shutdown to execute its long-awaited plans.
“It’s a lot for the government to say this is just a coincidence,” she said.
Leonard said the Trump administration has refused to provide details on which agencies are planning to issue more RIF notices. Vought said the administration is planning to send RIF notices to up to 10,000 federal employees.
“We still don’t know where the other agencies are. Are they forcing people to prepare RIF notices, as we speak, Your Honor, and just refusing to reveal that to this court? We think it’s incredibly likely that is the case,” she said.
If you would like to contact this reporter about recent changes in the federal government, please email [email protected], or reach out on Signal at jheckman.29
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