Court halts planned layoffs of over 4,000 US federal employees
A federal judge in the United States issued a temporary injunction on Wednesday, preventing the Trump administration from carrying out plans to terminate federal employees during the ongoing government shutdown.This decision comes shortly after the administration sent out layoff notifications to more than 4,000 workers just five days prior.
“Such actions are in violation of federal laws,” stated U.S. District Court Judge Susan Yvonne Illston in San Francisco during a hearing where she granted the temporary restraining order to the administration’s legal team.
“You cannot conduct business this way in a country governed by laws,” Illston remarked.
Two labor unions, representing tens of thousands of federal employees, requested Judge Illston to halt the proposed layoffs.
While the Trump administration had indicated layoffs were imminent during the shutdown, President Donald Trump consistently claimed these cuts targeted "Democrat agencies" or specific programs.
Illston accused the Trump administration of taking advantage of the government funding impasse, noting that it had “leveraged the shutdown to act as if the law does not apply to them and to alter the government to their preferences.”
The judge expressed her belief that the unions were likely to demonstrate that the actions taken by the Trump administration were both unlawful and “arbitrary and capricious.”
Democracy Forward, the advocacy organization representing the unions in the legal case, praised the judge’s ruling.
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