After Congress paused layoffs, 1,000 feds still facing dismissals are seeking court intervention

Around 1,000 federal employees across five agencies have been laid off or will soon face that fate despite Congress pausing any immediate reductions. 

Unions and other groups representing them are now asking a federal court to quickly intervene to enforce a provision in the spending bill that ended the shutdown, which barred agencies from taking any step to implement a reduction in force from the day the shutdown began on Oct. 1 through Jan. 30. 

Most pressingly, the American Federation of Government Employees, the American Foreign Service Association and Democracy Forward are asking a federal judge in California to block around 250 layoffs scheduled to go into effect on Friday. State informed the employees the RIFs, about which it first notified employees in July, would take effect this week after the shutdown delayed the initial schedule. 

Additionally, the Education Department is looking to finalize layoffs of 247 Office of Civil Rights employees for whom it originally sent notices in April. The department said it is awaiting clarity from the U.S. District Court, which, prior to the continuing resolution, had paused shutdown-related layoffs, to determine if it can move forward with separating the workers. 

The Defense Department in October separated around 270 employees from the Defense Technical Information Center and the Defense Contract Audit Agency, which the plaintiffs in the ongoing lawsuit now say should be reversed as a result of the spending law that ended the shutdown. The employees received notice of their layoffs in August. The DTIC employees are now slated to be removed on Jan. 31—the first day allowable under the current CR—while the DCAA were formally separated from their roles on Oct. 4. 

The plaintiffs similarly argued that the 200 layoffs that went into effect during the shutdown at the General Services Administration and the roughly 75 at the Small Business Administration should be reversed. SBA last month told impacted employees their RIFs were rescinded due to the CR, but reversed course the following day. 

The Trump administration has pointed to legal guidance from the Office of Management and Budget and the Justice Department to justify its decisions to move forward with the layoffs. They said the RIFs were not in any way related to the shutdown and therefore the spending law did not apply to them. Agencies told the court that thousands of additional layoffs that were first sent out during the shutdown have been rescinded. 

Democratic lawmakers have since said the law made no carve out for RIFs that preceded the shutdown, noting it applied to any layoff-related action between Oct. 1 and Jan. 30. 

“No federal funds may be used to initiate, carry out, implement, or otherwise notice a reduction in force to reduce the number of employees within any department, agency, or office of the federal government” for the duration of the spending law, the continuing resolution ordered.

AFGE and AFSA are seeking a temporary restraining order by Friday morning to block the State RIFs, and asking the judge to take immediate action on the other cases as well. 

“OMB and [the Office of Personnel Management] have no authority to direct other agencies to apply a misinterpretation of federal law,” the groups said. “Federal agency defendants likewise have no authority to violate” the CR. 

AFGE National President Everett Kelley said Congress was clear in its intent. 

“The language in the bill and the intent of Congress is unambiguous, and so is the illegality of agencies proceeding to fire workers regardless of the prohibition,” Kelley said. “Because this administration continues to defy the law, the courts must intervene and protect these illegal terminations from proceeding.”

One foreign service officer impacted by the forthcoming layoff told Government Executive State was moving quickly and basically saying, ‘Sue us.'"

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston had not yet ruled, nor requested a hearing, on the restraining order request as of Thursday afternoon.