by Madison Benoit ‘29 on October 23, 2025
National and Global News
As the government shutdown carries on, the White House and the Trump administration vow to continue with the nearly 4,000-person mass layoffs that were recently blocked by a court order.
The layoffs are currently aimed at more than 400 employees at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, 465 Education Department Staff, and 102 employees at the Census Bureau.
This information comes from a court filing in a battle between two federal employee unions—The American Federation of Government Employees and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees—against the Trump administration. The unions have filed against the administration, stating that the firings are “politically driven RIFs,” or reductions in force, defined as the permanent termination of employees, often on a large scale, typically due to financial hardship, restructuring, or other business decisions.
U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston from the Northern District of California granted the unions a temporary restraining order, which will halt some of the layoffs that were announced on Oct. 10 and will prevent new layoffs from taking place until the next hearing on Oct. 28, at which she will consider an indefinite pause.
Although the administration has repeatedly stated that they will obey the order and stop the blocked layoffs, this comes after the Treasury and the Department of Health and Human Services saw the highest number of reductions, with more than 1,000 workers laid off. The administration has also clearly noted that they believe that most of the employees who received their notices before the court order, or are expecting to soon, are not protected by the court order, which only applies to programs or offices where the suing unions have members or bargaining units.
Judge Illston said that she does not think agencies should be carrying out layoffs while the temporary restraining order is in effect and urges the government to “err on the side of caution” at a status conference.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has called Illston “another far-left partisan judge.” Leavitt has also added that the White House is confident their actions are legal and called the layoffs “an unfortunate consequence” of the government shutdown.
The order is further complicated by the executive order issued by President Donald Trump earlier this year, which ended collective bargaining rights for most federal workers, citing national security concerns.
This means several agencies indicated they believed the court order does not apply to their employees because their agency no longer has an obligation to bargain with the unions that have sued the administration.
These layoffs still only amount to a small number of the federal employees who have left the government since Trump returned to the White House in January.