Judge extends ban on large-scale RIFs indefinitely
The preliminary injunction replaces a temporary restraining order that was set to expire Friday, and bars agencies from carrying out an executive order on RIFs.
A court order that bars the Trump administration from conducting large-scale layoffs in conjunction with the reorganization of federal civilian agencies will remain in place for the foreseeable future after a U.S. District Court judge in San Francisco found once again that the administration violated separation of powers principles with its restructuring orders.
On Thursday evening, Judge Susan Illston issued a preliminary injunction that largely mirrored a temporary restraining order she had signed two weeks earlier. It prohibits the Office of Management and Budget, the Office of Personnel Management, the U.S. DOGE Service and 19 departments and agencies from carrying out the president’s February executive order that told agency officials to draft and implement reorganization and downsizing plans.
The latest injunction also requires agencies to reverse any reductions in force (RIF) notices they’ve already begun or conducted under the executive order, but allows them to pause those “retrospective” steps while the case is being appealed.
In reaching her decision, Illston said she concluded that the agency RIFs and reorganizations were in “blatant” disregard for Congress’s authority to establish and fund agencies, and that she was unpersuaded by the administration’s argument that it was only offering guidance to agencies who might want to downsize their operations on their own.
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“The role of a district court is to examine the evidence, and at this stage of the case the evidence discredits the executive’s position and persuades the Court that plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their suit,” she wrote. “The president ordered agencies to plan for ‘large-scale RIFs’ and reorganizations. The agencies began submitting ‘Agency RIF and Reorganization Plans’ for review and approval by the president’s centralized decisionmakers. Agencies then rapidly began to implement these reorganizations and large-scale reductions in force (RIFs) without Congressional approval. In some cases, as plaintiffs’ evidence shows, agency changes intentionally or negligently flout the tasks Congress has assigned them. After dramatic staff reductions, these agencies will not be able to do what Congress has directed them to do.”
The administration on Friday quickly appealed the judge’s latest order to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals; they have already asked the Supreme Court to overturn her earlier temporary restraining order.
In that petition to the high court, government attorneys argued that the RIFs agencies have been engaged in are “indisputably” allowed by federal law, and that the judge overstepped her authority by blocking them.
“And regardless, respondents’ inability to directly challenge agency RIFs does not entitle them to instead attack the Executive Branch’s whole program of RIFs by seeking to enjoin implementation of the executive order … government-wide,” they wrote. “There is no coherent reason why the president needs statutory authorization to direct agencies to conduct RIFs to further a reorganization within the statutory bounds permitted by Congress, let alone when it is undisputed that the agencies could have done the exact same thing unilaterally.”
Illston’s Thursday orders still leaves room for agencies to conduct RIFs — if they truly are unilateral — but not if they’re in accordance with the reorganization plans called for by the executive order.
Most agencies still have not made those plans public, and have been resisting efforts in the lawsuit to force their disclosure. However, the judge reviewed four of them privately, and concluded that the RIFs they call for are likely not steps agencies would have taken on their own.
“Those plans support plaintiffs’ contention that the agencies’ understanding is that [Office of Management and Budget and Office of Personnel Management] ‘approval,’ whether formal or otherwise, is a necessary triggering step in the agencies’ current RIF and reorganization processes,” she wrote. “Other evidence in the record supports this. For instance, an official at the Department of Labor attributes the RIF to Executive Order 14210, citing section 3(c) of that order specifically. Plaintiffs have come forward with evidence that some of the federal agency defendants have been pressured to institute RIFs on a larger scale than what the agencies themselves initially sought to do in their plans.”
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The injunction barring large-scale RIFs applies to the departments of Commerce, Energy, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, State, Treasury, Transportation and Veterans Affairs, plus AmeriCorps, the Peace Corps, the Environmental Protection Agency, the General Services Administration, the National Labor Relations Board, the National Science Foundation, the Small Business Administration and the Social Security Administration. The military, immigration functions and law enforcement were excluded from Trump’s February executive order, and were not part of the lawsuit.
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