Judge Widens Block on Shutdown-Related Layoffs to Cover More Federal Workers

The judge criticized the layoff plan as ‘politically motivated’ and ‘arbitrary and capricious.’

Closed signage is seen around the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden on the National Mall in Washington on Oct. 12, 2025. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

A federal judge has broadened her order blocking the Trump administration from carrying out mass layoffs during the federal government shutdown, extending protections to tens of thousands more federal workers.

At an emergency hearing in San Francisco on Oct. 17, Judge Susan Illston of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California expanded her earlier temporary restraining order to cover employees represented by the National Federation of Federal Employees, the Service Employees International Union, and the National Association of Government Employees.

Her original Oct. 15 order had applied only to members of the American Federation of Government Employees and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the unions that filed the lawsuit.

Illston also directed federal agencies to report by noon on Oct. 20 how many workers they intended to lay off and how many of those were now protected by the court’s orders. Justice Department attorney Elizabeth Hedges said agencies would comply, but warned that it would be difficult to gather the data over a shutdown weekend.

“We are in a shutdown. And part of the reason why this is so extraordinarily burdensome to the agencies is because we’re in a shutdown,” Hedges told the court, according to the Federal News Network.

“Every time we have to file something, it requires figuring out who to contact, who’s not furloughed, etcetera. So it is an extreme burden to comply on these timelines.”

Illston responded by saying that the burden had been “quite deliberately placed on your shoulders” by the administration’s actions, “and that’s why we’re in this very awkward situation.”

Hedges said that agencies believed that they had been complying with the judge’s original order. She noted that the restraining order had “said one thing” until it was “clarified or modified” during the hearing, and said she would relay the changes to the agencies.

Illston issued her initial block on Oct. 15, temporarily halting plans by the administration to conduct reductions-in-force, or RIFs, during the shutdown.

At that earlier hearing, Illston criticized the layoff plan as “politically motivated” and “arbitrary and capricious.” She cited President Donald Trump’s own comments calling the firings “Democrat-oriented,” and said the government was acting as if “the laws don’t apply to them anymore.”

“Things are being done before they’re being thought through,” she said on Oct. 15. “It’s very much ‘Ready, fire, aim.’”

The layoffs stem from the Trump administration’s stated intention to carry out an RIF of furloughed employees during the government shutdown. A directive from Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought indicates that the administration plans to dismiss as many as 10,000 employees during the shutdown.

“That’s just a snapshot,” Vought said in an Oct. 15 appearance on The Charlie Kirk Show. “I think it’ll get much higher.”

The dispute arises from a Sept. 30 lawsuit filed by federal unions arguing that the administration is using the shutdown to carry out unlawful RIFs. The suit challenges a memo from Vought, which the plaintiffs say “takes the legally unsupportable position” that agencies treat the lapse in appropriations as eliminating statutory job protections under the Antideficiency Act and carry out RIFs “for any programs for which the funding has lapsed and that are not priorities of the President.”

In court filings in response to the unions’ claims, the Justice Department argued that agencies have broad discretion in deciding if and when RIFs are necessary and that their claims of “political discrimination” are “nothing but speculation.”