A court–ordered block on Trump administration–issued reductions in force (RIF) will remain in effect after a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction Tuesday afternoon, preventing future RIF notices during the government shutdown.
U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston said she will uphold a temporary restraining order she handed down earlier this month but will only block RIF notices received after Sept. 30, saying that many employees under the Small Business Administration (SBA) received their notices before the shutdown and are not protected by the order.
The SBA is one of eight agencies with employees represented by a coalition of federal employee unions that filed a suit after President Donald Trump and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought threatened thousands of federal layoffs if the Democrats did not vote to reopen the federal government.
Illston said that the preliminary injunction will also prevent the Trump administration from issuing any more RIF notices, explaining that the notices were likely politically motivated and intended as an attack on Democrats.
“The president said so,” Illston said during a hearing at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California about Trump citing the RIFs as the result of Democrats not voting to reopen the government.
“I believe that I will find that [the federal government’s] actions are arbitrary and capricious, as shown by the haphazard way in which the RIFs have rolled out and they are intended for the purpose of political retribution – as OMB Director Vought and the president himself have publicly announced,” said Illston.
She added that OMB and the Office of Personnel Management are “also likely unlawful in that they tell agencies that, during a lapse in appropriations, agencies no longer need to comply with their statutory mandates.”
At least 4,000 employees represented by the suing unions have received RIF notices since the start of the government shutdown.
Some of those employees have written to Illston, calling the RIFs traumatic and citing their concerns if the RIFs are carried out, she told the plaintiffs and defendants.
“I think it’s important that we remember that although we are here talking about statutes and administrative procedure and the like, we are also talking about human lives, and these human lives are being dramatically affected by the activities that we’re discussing this morning,” said Illston.
Illston said she expects to complete her written order soon.