The federal District Court for the Northern District of California (Susan Illston) has temporarily restrained the Office of Management and Budget, the Office of Personnel Management, and a variety of federal departments from implementing Reduction in Force notices issued to implement layoffs during the governmental shutdown.
The Court said the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO and other plaintiffs are likely to win in their case and would suffer irreparable harm if the RIF notices were carried out without a full hearing.
“It is 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,” the Court wrote. “But this is precisely what President Trump has announced he is doing” on social media.
“If what plaintiffs allege is true, then the agencies’ actions in laying off thousands of public employees during a government shutdown — and in targeting for RIFs those programs that are perceived as favored by a particular political party — is the epitome of hasty, arbitrary and capricious decisionmaking [under the Administrative Procedures Act]. The many snafus that plaintiffs detail in their papers…are testament to this,” the Court said.
The Court noted that the government lawyers “did not make any attempt to justify” their argument that it was appropriate to lay off workers in programs for which funding had lapsed because of the shutdown.
The Court set a hearing date for the request for a preliminary injunction for October 28. (American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO v. United States Office of Management and Budget, N. CA, No. 25-cv-08302, 10/15/25.)
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