Judge puts two-week pause on Trump's mass government layoffs

But the government may be ignoring it anyway

The Trump administration's ongoing mass firing of government employees has been put on hold, with a federal judge calling the move "likely illegal" and ordering the government to hand over evidence to prove it didn't violate the law.

Since taking office in January, Trump has issued a series of executive orders to slash and burn various government agencies and initiatives. On the tech front, these orders have hobbled government cybersecurity, potentially derailed the CHIPS Act, brought AI in to replace human IRS agents, threatened the future of US scientific leadership, and even mucked with the civilian tech workforce, among other things.

Judge Susan Illston of the Northern District Court of California issued a temporary restraining order [PDF] (TRO) Friday, putting a two-week hold on government-wide reductions in force (RIFs) that will lift on May 23. The order freezes RIF efforts at more than a dozen federal agencies affected by the job cuts, including the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which have been largely directing the effort with the support of Elon Musk's cost-cutting pseudo-department, DOGE.

The whole matter goes back to Trump's February 11 executive order [PDF] that directed the OMB and OPM to reduce the federal government workforce, with hiring not to exceed one new position for every four eliminated. The order directed OMB to draft a general plan, OPM to create new workforce rules, and agencies to run any plans by their DOGE representatives to get approval. 

A coalition of government employee unions sued to stop the RIFs on April 28, arguing that Trump's executive order exceeded his authority, and that such considerable restructuring of federal agencies required Congressional approval, which the executive order did not seek or obtain. Illston agreed in her order.

"It is the prerogative of presidents to pursue new policy priorities and to imprint their stamp on the federal government," Illston said. "But to make large-scale overhauls of federal agencies, any president must enlist the help of his co-equal branch and partner, the Congress."

"The Court … finds it necessary to temporarily enjoin further implementation of [RIF] plans because they flow from likely illegal directives," Illston added. 

Illston further sided with the plaintiffs in finding that additional memos issued by the OMB and OPM implementing Trump's order were also illegal, as they stemmed from an illegal order and were issued in violation the Administrative Procedure Act and the need to involve Congress.

This isn't the first legal action filed to stop Trump's gutting of the federal government. California federal court judge William Alsup twice ruled in March that the government had to rehire employees terminated during the RIFs due to them being illegal. In those cases, the illegality was laid at the feet of the OPM for both exceeding its authority and directing that employees be terminated due to poor performance even though that wasn't the case.

Despite court rulings already finding the reductions illegal, the Trump administration contends that it's the courts who are wrong.

"This bogus order by an activist judge seeks to block the President from exercising his authority to manage Executive Branch personnel," White House principal deputy press secretary Harrison Fields told The Register. "The district court's erroneous decision will not stand, and the Trump administration looks forward to victory on this issue."

The Trump administration has already filed an appeal against the TRO to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, despite TROs generally not being subject to appeal. For her part, Illston refused to entertain an appeal to the two-week order, finding that "doing so would render the exercise pointless," as the TRO is only in place pending a preliminary injunction hearing scheduled for May 22, the day before the TRO expires.

Interestingly enough, the government may be simply ignoring Illston's order to freeze RIFs. The case docket includes an email sent to the court from a Health and Human Services (HHS) employee (name redacted) that indicates they received an RIF termination letter the day after Illston ordered the TRO. We asked the White House about the matter, and it didn't answer the question. HHS has yet to respond. ®