Trump must halt mass layoffs of federal workers, judge rules

Isaiah Poritz, Parker Purifoy, Bloomberg News on May 10, 2025

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The Trump administration must temporarily cease from engaging in widespread layoffs and firings for government workers, a California federal court ruled Friday.

President Donald Trump’s February executive order calling for a radical reorganization of the federal workforce likely violates the Constitution, Judge Susan Illston of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California said.

She granted a temporary restraining order requested by coalition of labor unions, nonprofit organizations, and municipal governments to halt worker layoffs nationwide.

The ruling is the biggest blow so far to the president’s efforts to downsize the federal government by cutting costs and slashing what’s viewed as administrative bloat.

The Trump administration appealed the decision early Saturday to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Illston, a Clinton appointee, said at a Friday court hearing in San Francisco that she was inclined to grant the restraining order to “protect the power of the legislative branch.”

“The President has the authority to seek changes to executive branch agencies, but he must do so in lawful ways and, in the case of large-scale reorganizations, with the cooperation of the legislative branch,” Illston said in her order issued hours after the hearing. “Many presidents have sought this cooperation before; many iterations of Congress have provided it.”

The plaintiffs sued late last month, claiming that Trump exceeded his constitutional authority by reshaping the executive branch and its agencies without congressional approval.

The Trump administration has fired tens of thousands of employees nationwide, from agencies including the Health and Human Services Department and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The plaintiffs, which include American Federation of Government Employees, said the administration plans to lay off hundreds of thousands more at agencies including the Departments of Labor, State, Defense, and Energy.

The complaint points to a Feb. 11 executive order that sought to “commence a critical transformation of the Federal bureaucracy” by restructuring entire agencies and drastically reducing employee head count.

“With every move this President is making, we are holding him accountable in court, and seeing judges of all stripes recognize and defend the rule of law,” Skye Perryman, president of the Democracy Forward Foundation which represents the plaintiffs, said in a statement.

The plaintiffs are represented by Altshuler Berzon LLP, the Democracy Forward Foundation, and the AFGE. The government is represented by the Justice Department.

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The case is AFGE v. Trump, N.D. Cal., No. 3:25-cv-03698, 5/9/25.