Judge blocks Trump’s layoffs during shutdown, calling them illegal

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Wednesday granted a temporary restraining order blocking the Trump administration from laying off federal workers during the government shutdown, which has now stretched to two weeks.

Two unions sued the Trump administration last month ahead of the shutdown after the White House signaled a plan to lay off workers through “reductions in force” (RIFs) at federal agencies. At a hearing on Wednesday, a federal judge in the Northern District of California granted the unions’ motion to issue a temporary restraining order preventing the layoffs, which began on Friday.

“The activities that are being undertaken here are contrary to the laws,” U.S. District Judge Susan Yvonne Illston said. “You can’t do this in a nation of laws.”

Illston said that the Trump administration had “taken advantage of the lapse in government spending and government functioning to assume that all bets are off, the laws don’t apply to them anymore, and they can impose the structures that they like on the government situation that they don’t like.”

Illston said that she believed the plaintiffs can demonstrate that the Trump administration’s actions were illegal, in excess of authority and “arbitrary and capricious.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Themins Hedges argued that employment-related harms were “reparable” and that losing employment was not an “irreparable harm.”

But the judge issued a temporary restraining order, saying it would go into effect immediately. She said she plans to issue the order in writing later Wednesday.

An earlier filing from the government stated that the administration had begun laying off at least 4,000 workers.

Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said that Trump “seems to think his government shutdown is distracting people from the harmful and lawlessness actions of his administration, but the American people are holding him accountable, including in the courts.”

The judge’s statements, Perryman said, “make clear that the president’s targeting of federal workers — a move straight out of Project 2025’s playbook — is unlawful,” adding that “playing games with their livelihoods is cruel and unlawful and a threat to everyone in our nation.”