A federal judge in California froze the Trump administration\u2019s latest round of layoffs, saying the move is likely \u201cillegal and in excess of authority.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really ready, fire, aim on most of these programs,\u201d Judge Susan Illston of the US District Court for the Northern District of California said at a hearing in San Francisco on Wednesday. \u201cIt\u2019s a human cost that cannot be tolerated.\u201d<\/p>\n
She issued a temporary restraining order, effective immediately, requested by a coalition of federal worker unions. Her order would block terminations nationwide that were started last week.<\/p>\n
The administration must provide to the court a full accounting of all the employees that were laid off last week as well as all planned future layoffs by Friday, Illston said in her written order issued Wednesday<\/a> evening. She set Oct. 28 for a hearing on a preliminary injunction.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is also far from normal for an administration to fire line-level civilian employees during a government shutdown as a way to punish the opposing political party. But this is precisely what President Trump has announced he is doing,\u201d Illston wrote. <\/p>\n The Trump administration fired more than 4,100 workers<\/a> at nearly half a dozen agencies last Friday. About three-quarters of those who got termination notices worked at the departments of Health and Human Services and Treasury.<\/p>\n Illston, a Clinton appointee who paused mass layoffs in a separate case earlier this year, criticized a Department of Justice attorney for attempting to argue only about jurisdictional issues Wednesday and not the legal merits of the case.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re not going to get to the merits with me today because the merits are just so troublesome,\u201d Illston said.<\/p>\n The latest set of terminations marked an escalation for the Trump administration. After insisting that earlier reductions were aimed at cutting waste, President Donald Trump said that another round of layoffs slated for this week would target \u201cegregious socialist, semi-communist\u201d programs backed by Democrats.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not closing up Republican programs, because we think they work,\u201d Trump told reporters.<\/p>\n Trump signed an order<\/a> Wednesday ending the federal hiring freeze that had been in place since the start of his second term, requiring agencies to submit staffing plans for approval with the Office of Personnel Management and Office of Management and Budget.<\/p>\n More than 200,000 workers have left the federal government\u2014the nation\u2019s largest single employer\u2014since Trump took office, according to the Partnership for Public Service<\/a>.<\/p>\n Lawyers for the Trump administration limited their arguments to procedural matters. DOJ attorney Elizabeth Hedges said the case should be routed to the Merit Systems Protection Board, an argument that\u2019s been rejected in the past, and claimed that an injunction was premature because the reductions-in-force haven\u2019t fully taken effect.<\/p>\n Any order to reinstate the newly fired workers by Illston\u2014an aggressive gatekeeper who often sides with federal unions\u2014could be short-lived. In May, Illston issued a widespread freeze<\/a> on Trump\u2019s workforce cuts, which was upheld by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit but later reversed by the US Supreme Court.<\/p>\n The plaintiffs, a collection of government unions, say the administration exceeded its legal authority and violated the Antideficiency Act. They also say the administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act because its stated reason\u2014the shutdown\u2014is both arbitrary and irrelevant.<\/p>\n