DHS says shutdown layoffs at CISA will proceed despite court injunction

The Department of Homeland Security says it’s proceeding with planned layoffs at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, despite a recent court order barring workforce reductions across parts of the federal government during the ongoing shutdown.

In a Tuesday filing, CISA Acting Director Madhu Gottumukkala said the agency issued reduction-in-force notices to 54 employees on Oct. 11, roughly two weeks before a federal court issued a preliminary injunction pausing certain layoff activity governmentwide. The listed employees work across CISA’s Stakeholder Engagement Division, which includes branches focused on partnerships, international affairs and academic outreach.

CISA maintains it is in compliance with the court’s order, saying that no new reduction notices have been issued since the injunction, the October layoffs were planned beforehand and they involve no union-represented employees.

The injunction barred any layoffs since the Oct. 1 start of the shutdown, but applied only to “competitive areas”— the groupings of employees that agencies must create before engaging in RIFs — that contain members of one of the unions party to the lawsuit. Because CISA did not send layoff notices to any staffing groups that contained such union-represented workers, the agency argued it can proceed with the cuts.

In a table shown in Gottumukkala’s filing, affected division employees are marked with a “No” in a column that displays “Covered by Injunction.” The declaration appears to account only for the 54 layoffs within CISA’s Stakeholder Engagement Division, though Nextgov/FCW previously reported that employees in other CISA divisions were also affected in shutdown layoffs. 

In a statement to Nextgov/FCW, CISA Director of Public Affairs Marci McCarthy said that “the agency does not comment on pending litigation and the government’s filings speak for themselves.”

The filing highlights the tailored legal reasoning being used as a basis for the Trump administration to press ahead with federal personnel cuts, despite arguments that any such moves during the ongoing government shutdown are unlawful. Across the government, some 4,000 employees were targeted in the layoffs that came just days after federal funding lapsed.

The initial lawsuit was brought by a coalition of labor organizations representing federal employees, including eight national unions. They argued that DHS and other agencies unlawfully moved to issue and carry out layoffs during a lapse in appropriations, in violation of federal labor law and existing collective bargaining protections.

Cybersecurity has historically been a bipartisan darling of Washington, but CISA — deemed the nation’s core civilian cyberdefense agency — has become the subject of political scuffles in part due to its prior work combatting mis- and disinformation.

The agency has faced scrutiny from the Trump administration for some time. Top officials have aimed to “refocus” its mission amid GOP accusations that the agency engaged in censorship of Americans’ free speech. Those claims stem from CISA’s previous collaboration with social media platforms to remove false information online concerning the COVID-19 pandemic, elections and other divisive subjects around 2020.

Government Executive Reporter Eric Katz contributed to this story.

Editor's note: This article has been updated to include comment from CISA.