A federal judge on May 22 said she would likely extend her ruling blocking federal agencies from implementing mass layoffs.
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- U.S. District Judge Susan Illston during a hearing in San Francisco agreed with a group of unions, nonprofits and municipalities that layoffs that began last month are likely illegal.
- The judge on May 9 blocked about 20 agencies from engaging in mass layoffs for two weeks and required the reinstatement of workers who had already lost their jobs
A federal judge on Thursday said President Donald Trump’s administration cannot restructure and downsize the U.S. government without the consent of Congress and that she would likely extend her ruling blocking federal agencies from implementing mass layoffs.
U.S. District Judge Susan Illston during a hearing in San Francisco agreed with a group of unions, nonprofits and municipalities that layoffs that began last month are likely illegal and would cause widespread harm to the public.
Illston on May 9 blocked about 20 agencies from engaging in mass layoffs for two weeks and required the reinstatement of workers who had already lost their jobs. That order is set to expire on Friday, and the judge at the hearing said she was inclined to extend it “with some refinement.”
“Agencies may not conduct reductions in force in blatant disregard of congressional mandates, whether the president orders them to or not,” Illston, an appointee of Democratic former President Bill Clinton, said at the beginning of the hearing.
The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to pause Illston’s temporary ruling, saying she improperly infringed on Trump’s constitutional powers to control the executive branch.
“Neither Congress nor the Executive Branch has ever intended to make federal bureaucrats a class with lifetime employment, whether there was work for them to do or not,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in a court filing last week.
The plaintiffs said in court filings that Trump’s drastic downsizing of federal agencies will result in an array of widespread harms to the public, including gutting disaster relief programs, public health services, food safety inspections, and contagious disease prevention.
The case involves the departments of Agriculture, Health and Human Services, Treasury, Commerce, State and Veterans Affairs, among others.
The layoffs of tens of thousands of staff across the federal government are a critical piece of a push by the Republican president and billionaire adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to shrink the federal government and drastically cut spending.
Trump has urged agencies to eliminate duplicative roles, unnecessary management layers, and non-critical jobs while automating routine tasks, closing regional offices and reducing the use of outside contractors.
Roughly 260,000 federal workers, most of whom have taken buyouts, have left or will leave by the end of September. And deep cuts are earmarked for several agencies, including over 80,000 jobs at the Department of Veterans Affairs and 10,000 at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Dozens of lawsuits have challenged the administration’s efforts, and Illston’s ruling earlier this month was the broadest of its kind so far.
Another judge’s March ruling requiring agencies to reinstate nearly 25,000 probationary employees, who typically have been in their current roles for less than a year or two, has been paused by an appeals court.
Illston said in her May 9 decision that Republican and Democratic presidents have for decades respected the role of Congress in reorganizing the federal government. She said that while lawmakers have rebuffed some White House initiatives, they have also approved presidents’ plans to restructure agencies more than a dozen times since the 1930s.
“Constitutional commentators and politicians across party lines agree that sweeping reorganization of the federal bureaucracy requires the active participation of Congress,” she wrote.