Judge says she’s not done with RIF case just yet

Updated July 10 at 3:46 p.m.

The federal judge who temporarily blocked the Trump administration from implementing mass layoffs before the Supreme Court intervened has suggested she still plans to litigate the legality of individual agency workforce reduction plans. 

The high court this week struck down the injunction that impacted most major agencies, allowing the administration to move forward with widespread RIFs. New layoff notices have not gone out since that decision on Tuesday, but they are expected imminently at several agencies. The court made clear, however, that its ruling applied only to the overall finding of President Trump’s capacity to order staffing cuts and not to the legality of individual agency RIF plans. 

The content of those individual plans “thus remains squarely at issue in this case,” California-based U.S. District Judge Susan Illston, whose original decision led to the RIF pause, said in a new order Wednesday evening.

Because the Supreme Court noted that it did not rule on the legality of each agency layoff plan, Illston said, she now wants to further examine them to determine whether they comply with federal statute. 

Attorneys for the Trump administration previously noted it had 40 RIF actions underway at 17 agencies that were paused by Illston’s injunction. The federal employee unions, local governments and non-profit organizations that originally brought the lawsuit issued an “urgent request” following the Supreme Court decision asking the administration to submit those plans to the court for a decision on their legality. Illston ordered the administration to reply to that request by Monday and suggested she agreed the plans should be submitted for examination. 

The administration previously argued it could not release them because they were predecisional and subject to executive privilege, but the judge on Wednesday suggested that final decisions on the RIFs must have been made if her injunction had paused them from taking effect. She added the court was “not inclined” to allow for significant redactions. 

Several agencies are expected to act in the coming days to implement RIFs. The State Department previously told the court it was one day away from sending out layoff notices before the judge intervened. Employees there told Government Executive the expectation inside the department is that those will take place as soon as this week. State Secretary Marco Rubio confirmed to reporters while traveling in Malaysia on Thursday that the department was moving forward with RIFs. 

"We’ve been ready to implement it pending a court decision, which now has been reached," Rubio said. "There’s some timing associated with how you do that, how you actually implement it, but our intent is to move forward with the plans that we’ve notified Congress of weeks ago and that we took months to design."

The Interior Department was also on the verge of sending out RIF notices just before Illston’s order took effect. 

This story has been updated with additional comment.