Agency RIF plans will remain secret for now after court blocks release

Federal agencies will not have to release its mass layoff plans after an appeals court granted the Trump administration’s request to delay a judge’s prior order, once again setting back efforts to block large-scale workforce reductions from moving forward. 

A U.S. district court in northern California ruled last week that most major agencies must turn over their reduction-in-force plans to the judge and plaintiffs who sued over the cuts. While those plans were not yet set to be made public, Judge Susan Illston said she wanted to review them in order to litigate whether they were following federal statutes. Agencies were also facing a requirement to publicly lay out around 70 RIF actions that were previously underway before Illston blocked them from moving forward. 

Ahead of Wednesday’s deadline for the plans to be unveiled privately and the already underway RIF actions to be unveiled publicly, the Trump administration asked the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to block Illston’s order on an emergency basis. The court on Tuesday evening agreed to pause that order from taking effect. The judges—a panel of two President Clinton appointees and one George W. Bush appointee—said only the order was stayed pending further action.

The Trump administration has repeatedly argued the RIF plans are deliberative in nature and subject to change and therefore should not be released—privately or publicly. Their release, it said, would have a chilling effect on internal discussions within the executive branch going forward. 

Illston had rejected that argument, noting the administration previously told the Supreme Court that her order blocking all layoffs at impacted agencies paused dozens of RIF actions—affecting an untold number of employees—from moving forward. If the plans were developed sufficiently such that the order stopped them from taking imminent effect, the judge said, they were not in a “predecisional” phase. 

The Office of Personnel Management and Office of Management and Budget issued a memorandum in February requiring agencies to submit reorganization and RIF plans. Those plans are now potentially facing public scrutiny. 

The Supreme Court earlier this month struck down Illston’s larger injunction on the RIFs, allowing agencies to move forward with layoffs. So far, the departments of State, Health and Human Services and Education, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, have announced, implemented or finalized RIFs following the Supreme Court’s decision. Illston said despite the high court's ruling, she is interested in evaluating the legality of individual agency's layoff plans. 

More agencies are taking steps toward potentially implementing widespread layoffs. The Interior Department notified employees this week it had updated its “competitive areas,” the groupings of employees agencies must create before engaging in RIFs. Interior was set to lay off thousands of employees imminently when Illston’s original injunction took effect. The Agriculture Department has asked employees to transfer to mission-critical roles while reminding them more staffing cuts are expected. 

The Trump administration said in a court filing last week 19 agencies had submitted to the Office of Personnel Management requests to change its competitive areas: the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Energy, HHS, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, State, Transportation and Treasury, as well as AmeriCorps, EPA, General Services Administration, Small Business Administration, Social Security Administration, National Science Foundation and OPM itself.

OPM said some of those agencies are now walking back portions of their plans, due to voluntary and incentivized departures in their workforces over the last few months.