The Trump administration is trying to keep a lid on its scheme to lay off thousands of workers across the federal government.
On Sunday, the Justice Department asked for a protective order in federal court so officials would not have to divulge details of their looming “reductions in force,” or RIFs. Those potentially massive job cuts are expected to hit agencies throughout the bureaucracy in the coming weeks.
A group of labor unions and nonprofits recently filed a lawsuit alleging the imminent layoffs and restructurings are illegal, and a judge on Friday issued a restraining order temporarily blocking them. As part of her ruling, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston, of the Northern District of California, ordered the administration to cough up the details of its plans by Tuesday.
Making the plans public could reveal the rationale behind specific cuts and whether officials are lawfully following the rules around reorganizing federal agencies. As the unions and nonprofits put it in their complaint, “The American people have a right to know what their President is doing to dismantle their federal government.”
But the White House is trying to keep the plans secret, claiming they include “highly sensitive information” and that disclosing them would “irreparably harm” the Office of Management and Budget and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, two agencies at the center of Trump’s government-cutting agenda.
The White House instructed federal agencies to submit the first phase of their downsizing plans by March 13 and the second by April 14. Although some have leaked out, the administration has not made any of those plans public, despite requests from unions, the media and Democrats on Capitol Hill. In some cases the layoffs have already started.
Illston, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, noted in her order that the administration’s planned cuts “largely remain secret” and that they “flow from likely illegal directives” from the Trump administration.
The lawsuit revolves around the question of whether Trump exceeded his constitutional powers by trying to carry out mass layoffs throughout the government unilaterally. The law allows for agencies to pursue reductions in force, but unions argue — and Illston agreed — that what Trump is doing goes beyond what’s allowed without authorization from Congress.
The reductions are a key component of Trump’s overall scheme to downsize the government and shrink the federal workforce without lawmakers’ approval.
Other strategies have varied in their success. Many workers have accepted the White House’s “deferred resignation” offer to leave their jobs and remain on the payroll through September, but the administration’s efforts to fire tens of thousands of probationary federal workers have been stymied in court, at least temporarily.
A key legal question in the case against Trump’s reductions in force is whether federal agencies are drawing up their own plans according to established rules, or simply following Trump’s orders and trying to fulfill his wishes. The administration has claimed the agencies are acting independent of the White House — something Illston wasn’t buying.
“The evidence [the unions] have presented paints a very different picture: that the agencies are acting at the direction of the President and his team,” she wrote.
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