{"id":5763,"date":"2025-10-15T10:20:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T10:20:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/5763\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T10:20:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T10:20:06","slug":"federal-shutdown-stalls-californias-legal-battles-with-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/5763\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal shutdown stalls California’s legal battles with Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Days before the Trump administration was supposed to file its response to a California lawsuit challenging its targeting of gender-affirming care<\/a> providers, attorneys for the U.S. Justice Department asked a federal judge to temporarily halt the proceedings.<\/p>\n

Given the federal shutdown, they argued, they just didn\u2019t have the lawyers to do the work.<\/p>\n

\u201cDepartment of Justice attorneys and employees of the federal defendants are prohibited from working, even on a voluntary basis, except in very limited circumstances, including \u2018emergencies involving the safety of human life or the protection of property,\u2019\u201d they wrote in their filing Oct. 1, the first day of the shutdown.<\/p>\n

The district judge presiding over the case, which California filed in federal court in Massachusetts along with a coalition of other Democrat-led states, agreed, and promptly granted the request.<\/p>\n

It was just one example of the now weeks-old federal shutdown<\/a> grinding to a halt important litigation between California and the Trump administration, in policy battles with major implications for people\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n

The same day, in the same Massachusetts court, Justice Department attorneys were granted a pause in a lawsuit in which California and other states are challenging mass firings at the U.S. Department of Education, after noting that department funding had been suspended and it didn\u2019t know \u201cwhen such funding will be restored by Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n

The same day in U.S. District Court in Central California, the Trump administration asked for a similar pause in a lawsuit that it had brought against California, challenging the state\u2019s refusal to provide its voter registration rolls to the administration.<\/p>\n

Justice Department attorneys wrote that they \u201cgreatly regret any disruption caused to the Court and the other litigants,\u201d but needed to pause the proceedings until they were \u201cpermitted to resume their usual civil litigation functions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since then, the court in Central California has advised the parties of alternative dispute resolution options and outside groups \u2014 including the NAACP \u2014 have filed motions to intervene in the case, but no major developments have occurred.<\/p>\n

The pauses in litigation \u2014 only a portion of those that have occurred in courts across the country \u2014 were an example of sweeping, real-world, high-stakes effects of the federal government shutdown that average Americans may not consider when thinking about the shutdown\u2019s impact on their lives.<\/p>\n

Federal employees working in safety and other crucial roles \u2014 such as air traffic controllers<\/a> \u2014 have remained on the job, even without pay, but many others have been forced to stay home. The Justice Department did not spell out which of its attorneys had been benched by the shutdown, but made clear that some who had been working on the cases in question were no longer doing so.<\/p>\n

Federal litigation<\/a> often takes years to resolve, and brief pauses in proceedings are not uncommon. However, extended disruptions \u2014 such as one that could occur if the shutdown drags on \u2014 would take a toll, forestalling legal answers in some of the most important policy battles in the country.<\/p>\n

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, whose office has sued the Trump administration more than 40 times<\/a> since January, has not challenged every request for a pause by the Trump administration \u2014 especially in cases where the status quo favors the state.<\/p>\n

However, it has challenged pauses in other cases, with some success.<\/p>\n

For example, in that same Massachusetts federal courthouse Oct. 1, Justice Department attorneys asked a judge to temporarily halt proceedings in a case in which California and other states are suing to block the administration\u2019s targeted defunding of Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers.<\/p>\n

Their arguments were the same as in the other cases: Given the shutdown, they didn\u2019t have the attorneys to do the necessary legal work.<\/p>\n

In response, attorneys for California and the other states pushed back, noting that the shutdown had not stopped Department of Health and Human Services officials from moving forward with the measure to defund Planned Parenthood \u2014 so the states\u2019 residents remained at imminent risk of losing necessary healthcare.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe risks of irreparable harms are especially high because it is unclear how long the lapse in appropriations will continue, meaning relief may not be available for months at which point numerous health centers will likely be forced to close due to a lack of funds,\u201d the states argued.<\/p>\n

On Oct. 8, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani denied the government\u2019s request for a pause, finding that the states\u2019 interest in proceeding with the case \u201coutweighs\u201d the administration\u2019s interest in pausing it.<\/p>\n

Talwani\u2019s argument, in part, was that her order denying a pause would provide Justice Department officials the legal authority to continue litigating the case despite the shutdown.<\/p>\n

Bonta said in a statement that \u201cTrump owns this shutdown\u201d and \u201cthe devastation it\u2019s causing to hardworking everyday Americans,\u201d adding that his office will not let Trump use it to cause even more harm by delaying relief in court cases.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not letting his Administration use this shutdown as an excuse to continue implementing his unlawful agenda unchecked. Until we get relief for Californians, we\u2019re not backing down \u2014 and neither are the courts,\u201d Bonta said. \u201cWe can\u2019t wait for Trump to finally let our government reopen before these cases are heard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump and Republicans in Congress have blamed the shutdown on Democrats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Days before the Trump administration was supposed to file its response to a California lawsuit challenging its targeting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5764,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,1436,3622,6246,828,6241,6244,6242,6243,6240,6245,6247,1292,225,1695],"class_list":["post-5763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-case","tag-court","tag-department","tag-employee","tag-federal-shutdown","tag-human-life","tag-justice-attorney","tag-other-democrat-led-state","tag-pause","tag-proceeding","tag-request","tag-shutdown","tag-state","tag-trump-administration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}