Judge says she plans to order Trump administration to pause shutdown layoffs

A federal judge said Wednesday that she expects to temporarily block the Trump administration’s plans to lay off thousands of federal workers during the government shutdown, indicating she’ll probably side with unions, which have argued that the dismissals were illegal.

Senior U.S. District Judge Susan Illston said she is inclined to tell the administration to halt its layoffs less than a week after eight agencies - Commerce, Education, Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Homeland Security and Treasury - had issued reduction-in-force notices to more than 4,100 workers. About half of the firings at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were later reversed, but administration officials and President Donald Trump have promised further cuts, blaming Democrats for not agreeing to pass legislation to fund the government.

The government has argued that agencies have broad authorities to reorganize workforces to conform to the president’s priorities. But the unions for federal workers argued that the layoffs were improperly handled, politically motivated and based on a false premise that the shutdown allows the government not to continue its statutory requirements. They have also argued that the government’s use of RIFs, an extensive process requiring promised severance payments, during the shutdown would break the Antideficiency Act, which forbids the government from obligating or expending any money not appropriated by Congress. Trump administration officials had privately cautioned against proceeding with the RIFs because of that law, The Washington Post previously reported.

In a court hearing on the unions’ motion for a temporary restraining order, Illston said Wednesday she was inclined to enjoin dismissals because the administration has appeared not to follow the law when doing the RIFs. She also raised concerns about the errors the government has made, initially giving inaccurate estimates of how many people were given RIF notices at some agencies.

“The evidence suggests that the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management have taken advantage of the lapse in government spending, in government functioning, to assume all bets are off, the laws don’t apply to them anymore,” she said.

An attorney for the Justice Department said a temporary restraining order was not warranted because there was no irreparable harm and would probably not impact dismissals that would happen in two months. Illston asked her to respond to the unions’ arguments that the RIFs were illegal, but the government attorney responded that she was not prepared to address the merits.

Many of the dismissals last week hit a wide range of offices that had provided services and other resources to the country’s most vulnerable, including disabled schoolchildren, low-income families and homeless people, according to workers and documents. Workers at six agencies were told they were part of the RIFs; the EPA and Energy Department also told workers that they may receive RIF notices, OMB senior adviser Stephen Billy wrote in a court filing Tuesday.

Commerce, HHS, HUD and DHS recalled furloughed employees to work on the RIF process, Billy said.

RIFs generally require the government provide employees at least 60 days’ advance notice and take into account a worker’s veteran status, length of service and whether that person can be reassigned.

White House budget director Russell Vought told “The Charlie Kirk Show” on Wednesday that the administration planned to push ahead with layoffs, though that was before the hearing.

“If there are policy opportunities to downsize the scope of the federal government we want to use those opportunities. … We’re definitely talking thousands of people,” Vought said. “We want to be very aggressive where we can be in shuttering the bureaucracy.”

The administration has urged Democrats to vote for the House’s stopgap spending bill, warning that firings would continue through the shutdown. At the same time, the administration has continued funding what it deems political priorities - military service members’ pay and backfill for social safety net programs.

Senate Democrats have not moved on their continuing resolution votes since the shutdown began.

Trump told reporters Tuesday afternoon that “the Democrats are getting killed on the shutdown because we’re closing up programs that are Democrat programs that we were opposed to."

They’re never going to come back in many cases,” Trump said. “So we’re being able to do things that we were unable to do before.”

The OMB also warned in a X post on Tuesday that it was “making every preparation to batten down the hatches and ride out the Democrats’ intransigence. Pay the troops, pay law enforcement, continue the RIFs, and wait.”