Federal Judge Halts Trump Administration’s Mass Layoffs at HHS

A federal judge on Tuesday halted the Trump administration’s mass layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services, ruling that the sweeping downsizing plan was likely unlawful.

“The executive branch does not have the authority to order, organize, or implement wholesale changes to the structure and function of the agencies created by Congress,” U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose wrote in the ruling.

She granted a preliminary injunction requested by attorneys general from 19 states and the District of Columbia. Their initial May lawsuit alleged that “Over the course of a few days in late March and early April, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (Secretary Kennedy) dismantled the Department in violation of Congress’s instructions, the U.S. Constitution, and the many statutes that govern the Department’s programs and appropriate funds for it to administer.”

The Trump administration accelerated its plan to reshape HHS with a March 27 directive titled “HHS Announces Transformation to Make America Healthy Again,” which offered a restructuring that “results in a total downsizing from 82,000 to 62,000 full-time employees.” It included 10,000 employees who departed voluntarily and another 10,000 who were cut. There were additional probationary employees terminated the month before.

In their lawsuit, the states alleged that “critical offices were left unable to perform statutory functions” after the layoffs, and that “abandoning the Department’s core functions was not an unintended side effect, but rather, the intended result of the March 27 Directive.”

“Secretary Kennedy refused to undertake this restructuring legally or carefully,” they wrote, adding that “the consequences” of the layoffs and restructuring “are severe, complicated, and potentially irreversible.”

DuBose agreed with the plaintiffs’ allegations, writing that “the States have sufficiently shown irreparable harm” and were likely to succeed in their challenge.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta celebrated the ruling in a statement Tuesday.

“We are pleased the court temporarily halted the Trump Administration’s unlawful dismantling of the agency so that HHS can continue its important work,” Bonta said. “The Trump Administration is not only acting against the best interest of Americans nationwide, but is once again acting beyond its power — the President does not have the power to incapacitate a department that Congress created, nor can it decline to spend funds that were appropriated by Congress for that department.”

In a statement, HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said “We stand by our original decision to realign this organization with its core mission and refocus a sprawling bureaucracy that, over time, had become wasteful, inefficient, and resistant to change.”

“While we strongly disagree with the decision by a Biden-appointed district court judge, HHS remains committed to modernizing a health workforce that for too long prioritized institutional preservation over meaningful public health impact. We are reviewing the decision and considering next steps,” Nixon added.

There have been numerous suits regarding the large-scale layoffs instituted by the Trump administration across the federal government. That includes litigation on Trump’s deferred resignation program and the shutdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

While a federal judge in California had ordered the administration to reinstate 16,000 probationary employees across six agencies, the Supreme Court blocked it on emergency appeal.

DuBose noted as much in the opening of her ruling.

“Yet another group of plaintiffs seek relief from a federal court to halt sweeping changes to a federal agency’s operations which they claim disregard congressionally mandated programs to the detriment and peril of all who live in the United States,” she wrote.

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Nuha Dolby is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.