A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from implementing multi-agency layoffs during the federal government shutdown, sparing an already depleted U.S. Department of Education from further reductions—at least for now.
Susan Illston, a San Francisco-based U.S. district judge, said she was inclined to agree with the unions that brought the case against the Trump administration, which represent thousands of federal workers who were laid off in the last week. She said she believes they will “demonstrate ultimately that what’s being done here is both illegal and is in excess of authority and is arbitrary and capricious.”
Trump administration officials, she said during a Wednesday hearing, “have taken advantage in the lapse of government spending and functioning to assume that all bets are off, that the laws don’t apply to them anymore, and that they can impose the structures that they like on the government situation that they don’t like.”
The case, filed by the American Federation of Government Employees, challenges layoffs of at least 4,000 staff across at least eight federal agencies. The employees began receiving layoff notices on Friday, the 10th day of the federal shutdown, during which much of the workforce has been furloughed and not paid.
Illston’s order would prohibit the Trump administration from issuing further reduction-in-force notices during, or because of, the federal government shutdown. The administration is also prohibited from further implementation of the RIF notices issued last week. The precise scope of the order was expected in writing later Wednesday.
She also again sought to have an exact figure pinned down for how many federal employees the Trump administration is seeking to eliminate.
Departments largely have not communicated publicly about their layoffs, and the administration last week issued layoff notices to 1,760 Department of Health and Human Services employees when it said it intended only to lay off 982. Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought said in a Wednesday interview that shutdown layoffs would ultimately total 10,000.
The Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The union lauded the order from Illston, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton.
“Today’s ruling is not only a win for our members, but also a win for the students in this country that would have been catastrophically impacted by these cuts,” said Rachel Gittleman, president of the union that represents Education Department workers. “If we’ve learned anything this year, it’s that the fight is just beginning. We will continue to do everything in our power to fight back against this illegal gutting of the U.S. Department of Education.”
The Education Department’s shrinking footprint
At the Education Department, more than 460 employees in at least six of 17 department offices were told their last day would be Dec. 9.
With the notices coming during the shutdown, when employees had been told not to check their work email, some laid-off employees likely haven’t seen their layoff notices, Gittleman said in a court filing.
Some employees were told they could face disciplinary action for checking their work email while furloughed, according to Gittleman.
The layoffs come after the Education Department had already shed nearly half its 4,100-member workforce this past winter.
If the latest round of proposed cuts stick, the department would lose roughly 20% of its remaining workforce, virtually wiping out entire offices that support the use of funds for students with disabilities and those living in poverty.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon asserted Wednesday in a post on X that the shutdown has shown the department is “unnecessary,” and she defended the layoffs, saying, “No education funding is impacted by the RIF.”
“Two weeks in, millions of American students are still going to school, teachers are getting paid, and schools are operating as normal,” she wrote.
But current and former Education Department staff have worried that billions of dollars for education grants appropriated by Congress might flow behind schedule or not at all with a further diminished staff. Civil rights investigators could have mounting caseloads, making enforcement impossible. School districts, state agencies, and parents would have virtually nowhere to turn for help interpreting and enforcing federal requirements for school accountability and special education.
Though Illston’s decision is a win for the union, past court rulings blocking federal firings, including at the Education Department, haven’t stuck.
The U.S. Supreme Court in July allowed the Education Department to proceed with the March layoff of almost 1,400 employees that a district judge had halted hile litigation played out. With that decision in the background, a federal appeals court in September gave the department the greenlight to continue with layoffs in a separate case.
Trump administration doesn’t defend layoffs’ legality
At Wednesday’s hearing, Elizabeth Hedges, an attorney for the Trump administration, declined to discuss whether it had a position on the legality of the firings, despite Illston’s repeated requests.
Instead, the administration asked the judge not to grant the temporary order, saying the court didn’t have jurisdiction over the case, and that the union could not prove its members sustained irreparable harm from the notices—a standard for such orders. The temporary order, Hedges argued, would expire before the employees were terminated in December.
“Any harms that are related to the RIFs would necessarily occur far out from now,” she said.
The union’s attorney, Danielle Leonard, disagreed, saying it was distressing for employees—some of whom might not know if they’re laid off and cannot reach anyone in HR to navigate the process because human resources workers have been furloughed—after an “already exceptionally difficult year.”
“We all know what has happened to date. Now this on top of it, when people aren’t being paid,” she said. “There is real harm now.”
Illston agreed, saying there are laws dictating how the government can carry out layoffs. And the Trump administration’s actions seem to “exceed it, bend it, break it, and need to be enjoined.”
“It’s very much ready, fire, aim at most of these programs, and it has a human cost, which is really why we’re here today,” she said. “It’s a human cost that really cannot be tolerated.”
