Federal judge orders reversal of hundreds of layoffs finalized during shutdown

A federal judge in San Francisco is reversing the terminations of hundreds of federal employees finalized during the recent government shutdown.

A preliminary injuction, signed Wednesday by Judge Susan Illston, orders the departments of Education and State, as well as the Small Business Administration and the General Services Administration, to rescind reduction in force notices for employees who were terminated between Oct. 1 and Nov. 12 — the start and end dates of the shutdown.

“Absent a contrary ruling from a higher court,” Illston is giving agencies until Dec. 23 to carry out the terms of her preliminary injunction.

“Defendants must do what the continuing resolution says. They may not take any further steps to implement or carry out a RIF through January 30, 2026, regardless of when the RIF notice first issued,” Illston wrote.

These agencies sent RIF notices to employees before the recent government shutdown. In most cases, separations were scheduled to take effect in October or November, during the shutdown.

The American Federation of Government Employees and the American Foreign Service Association, who are leading a lawsuit with other unions, argued agencies that finalized these RIFs during the government shutdown violated a stopgap spending bill passed by Congress that prohibited layoffs through Jan. 30, 2026.

The court issued a temporary restraining order earlier this month that blocked layoffs of nearly 250 Foreign Service officers from being finalized at the State Department. Those layoffs were originally scheduled for Nov. 10, but were pushed back to Dec. 5, and remain on hold.

The Trump administration has followed a narrower interpretation of the stopgap spending bill, and has only reinstated federal employees who received RIF notices between Oct. 1 and Nov. 12.

The continuing resolution Congress passed on Nov. 12 states that between Nov. 12, 2025 and Jan. 30, 2026, “no federal funds may be used to initiate, carry out, implement, or otherwise notice a reduction in force to reduce the number of employees within any department.”

It also states that “any reduction in force proposed, noticed, initiated, executed, implemented, or otherwise taken by an executive agency between October 1, 2025, and the date of enactment, shall have no force or effect.”

At a hearing before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Illston said she would grant the preliminary injunction requested by the unions, because the “chaotic nature of these RIFs has been continuing.”

“The continuing resolution, ending the longest shutdown the government has experienced to date, said that no federal funds would be spent RIF-ing people through Jan. 30. But that is not what is happening in some of these agencies,” Illston said.

The judge’s order will impact about 680 total federal employees. That includes nearly 250 Foreign Service officers at the State Department, 200 employees at GSA, 150 at the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, and nearly 80 at SBA.

During the hearing, Illston said she would consider the Justice Department’s request to delay her preliminary injunction from going into effect for a few days. This would give the Trump administration time to consider whether it will ask a federal appeals court to stay her ruling.

Illston said this would minimize some of the “whiplash” some federal employees have felt in other court cases, in which lower courts have reinstated them, only for an appeals court to allow layoffs to continue.

“They’d have to send a notice, and then another notice, and a notice saying, ‘Forget what we said yesterday.’ It would be terrible,” Illston said.

Brad Rosenberg, a DOJ attorney representing the Trump administration, said that rescinding layoffs now would be “logistically a big lift” for agencies, especially if the courts later allow those RIFs to proceed.

“If a RIF is rescinded, and if this court either decides at final judgment in this case, or if the government were to appeal, and an appellate court were to stay or vacate this Court’s preliminary injunction, government agencies would presumably have to start all over again with that, with that process, and it would be awfully hard to unscramble that egg,” Rosenberg said.

“That’s not going to provide the type of long-term relief that I suspect plaintiffs are seeking here,” he added.

Rosenberg argued that employees should bring their individual cases before the Merit Systems Protection Board. An appeals court recently allowed President Donald Trump to proceed with firing a Democratic member of the MSPB.

“This is merely the administration trying to carry out its policy objectives. And I realize that those policy objectives have consequences for individuals, and that they can be significant consequences, although we do think that those consequences can be remediated through proper channeling to the Merit Systems Protection Board,” he said.

Danielle Leonard, an attorney representing the plaintiff unions, said the “mandate was clear” from Congress, and that agencies should “nullify those RIFs.”

“We have Congress stepping in here and being incredibly clear about what the public interest needs in this very circumstance, and the public interest is in restoring these employees to their employment status and giving them clarity,” Leonard said. “Congress could have just said, ‘Stop.’ Congress could have just said, ‘Halt, let’s just freeze everything.’ They went further than that,” Leonard said.

Leonard said recently separated federal employees face “real and ongoing harm,” including eviction notices and unpaid bills.

“We have seen agencies exploit their lack of communication to keep employees in the dark, to keep them confused. They have not even told them whether they’re still employed when they directly ask. There absolutely has been harm,” she said.

AFGE National President Everett Kelley called Illston’s ruling “another victory for federal employees and for the rule of law.”

“When Congress voted to end the longest government shutdown in history, it spoke clearly and unambiguously that further reductions-in-force were prohibited, and any RIFs that occurred during the shutdown were required to be reversed. The administration’s continued defiance of that mandate is part of a troubling pattern of egregious actions against federal employees and the American public,” Kelley said.

John Dinkelman, president of the American Foreign Service Association, said Congress was clear that “reductions in force were prohibited” when it passed the continuing resolution, and that the administration’s efforts to proceed with RIFs were “unlawful.”

“Today’s ruling confirms this,” Dinkelman said.  “We will continue to fight to ensure that Foreign Service professionals are treated with the respect the law demands.”

If you would like to contact this reporter about recent changes in the federal government, please email jheckman@federalnewsnetwork.com, or reach out on Signal at jheckman.29

Copyright
© 2025 Federal News Network. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.