A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from laying off hundreds of State Department employees, after labor groups said the terminations would violate a legislative package Congress passed to reopen the federal government last month.
Judge Susan Illston of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California found the labor groups would likely win in arguing that the termination efforts violate the law, which Congress passed last month to end the longest partial government shutdown in history.
The law barred the government from using funds to “initiate, carry out, implement, or otherwise notice a reduction in force” through Jan. 30. Democrats who crossed the party line to vote for the bill touted that provision.
Two labor groups, the American Federation of Government Employees and the American Foreign Service Association, asked for court intervention this week, with the State Department informing more than 250 Foreign Service and civil service employees they would be terminated Friday, according to a press release from AFGE.
In granting a temporary restraining order, Illston wrote that the employees were notified they would be laid off because of reductions in force, or RIFs, first initiated before the government shutdown. Nothing in the plain text of the statute limits the provision “to apply only to those RIFs initiated during the government shutdown,” she wrote.
Illston decided to issue the order without a hearing “given the urgency of this motion — with employee firings scheduled for tomorrow, on exceedingly short notice from defendants,” she wrote.
“Some federal employees scheduled to be separated tomorrow are stationed abroad, meaning their separations could occur in a matter of only several hours,” Illston wrote.
Everett Kelley, AFGE’s national president, pointed out in a statement that congressional lawmakers clearly said no federal workers should lose their jobs through a reduction-in-force for the length of the stopgap funding measure.
“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,” he said.
Employees, in court documents, detailed the stress and uncertainty caused by the short notice that they would be pushed out of their positions by this week. One Foreign Service officer wrote that she’s in treatment for breast cancer and “extremely reliant” on the current health care plan through the State Department.
Another member of the American Foreign Service Association, who was being pushed into involuntary retirement, wrote in a court document that he would have to “completely rebuild” his career after 23 years of specialized diplomatic service. He survived a terrorist bombing while working as principal officer in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and said the department’s notice this week exacerbated his PTSD from the terrorist attack.
“My family has witnessed my struggle to comprehend how a career defined by sacrifice and top performance could end through bureaucratic elimination rather than recognition of merit,” he wrote.
“It is flabbergasting that the plain language of the law says that no RIFs should be taken and so I was shocked and dismayed that the Department chose to, with four days’ notice, sever us in an unexpected way,” he wrote.
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