The Trump administration has plans to “imminently” fire 1,539 employees in 68 different areas of the Department of the Interior but says it will hold off on some of those RIFS to comply with a federal court order.
In a legal filing Friday, the administration said it will refrain from layoffs in areas where employees are represented by labor unions. The administration’s filing did not specify how many areas would be protected from layoffs.
The information from Interior was shared in response to a temporary restraining order from Judge Susan Illston in the District Court for the Northern District of California that required the administration to halt future mass layoffs during the government shutdown, as well as to reveal any plans about upcoming layoffs.
In a tense back-and-forth proceeding Friday afternoon, Illston told Trump’s attorneys: “I don’t think any RIFs should be happening during the time that the TRO is in effect.” She added: “This is a terrible situation, and we ought not make it worse.”
Later, after the unions alleged that the Trump administration was not fully complying with her instructions, Illston again spoke tersely with the government’s lawyer, expressing visible frustration. “It is not complicated. During this time, these agencies should not be doing RIFs of the protected folks,” she said.
The temporary restraining order applied only to parts of the government that employ federal workers represented by the unions that are suing the administration over the RIFs. Just minutes before the federal government filed documents that detail its layoff plans, the two unions that initially sued the administration amended their initial lawsuit to add as plaintiffs three more unions that represent employees at Interior. Illston verbally extended her restraining order to cover those additional unions during the Friday afternoon conference, against the objections of the Trump administration’s attorney.
“Interior had intended on imminently abolishing positions in 68 competitive areas that include Plaintiff bargaining unit employees. However, Interior has stopped work on RIF notices for competitive areas that include bargaining unit members represented by Plaintiffs and it will not proceed with any RIFs for competitive areas that include bargaining unit members represented by Plaintiffs for as long as the TRO remains in force,” lawyers for Interior wrote in the filing.
The legal filing included information about previous and ongoing RIF plans at nearly every agency across the federal government. Most agencies declared that they have not issued any RIF notices yet and will not until at least after the restraining order is lifted. Some agencies, like the Department of Education and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, provided detailed information for the first time about how many employees in each area had been issued RIF notices.
Illston issued the restraining order against the Trump administration on Wednesday evening, after federal employee unions argued in court that it was illegal for the Trump administration to conduct mass layoffs during the government shutdown. Illston appeared to buy into the unions’ argument, repeatedly describing the administration’s actions as politically motivated.
The Trump administration has been using the shutdown as an excuse to fire swathes of government workers. President Trump, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and other White House representatives have laid the blame for the firings at Democrats’ feet for their refusal to vote on a Republican continuing resolution to reopen the government.
The Interior Department said in the Friday legal filing that the upcoming RIF plans are not related to the government shutdown and had been in the works for months before the shutdown. “These planning efforts were begun long before the current lapse in appropriations and had nothing to do with the lapse in appropriations,” the department’s lawyers wrote.
There is nothing about a government shutdown that requires mass layoffs and no historical precedent for the firings.
The Trump administration’s lawyer in the union lawsuit, Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Hedges, declined to argue on the merits of that lawsuit in a hearing Wednesday, which visibly frustrated Illston.
“This hatchet is falling on the heads of employees all across the nation, and you’re not even prepared to address whether that’s legal?” Illston said Wednesday. On Friday, Illston again asked Hedges whether she intended to discuss the merits of the case, and Hedges again declined.
The government has already issued layoff notices to just over 3,000 federal employees since the shutdown began, according to legal filings updated last week. That number was reduced from an initial count of just over 4,000 after the Trump administration admitted that it had fired some people in error. Some of those fired by mistake included employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention leading the government’s response to outbreaks of measles.
Layoffs at the Interior Department have been expected for months. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and DOGE representative Tyler Hassen have reportedly been planning a massive agency restructure and significant firings across Interior’s many departments, including the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Congressional Democrats are protesting, saying that the administration is denying Congress its role in evaluating the staffing decisions. “Every dollar of funding, every reorganization, every reprogramming, and every funding change or transfer is the direct jurisdiction of Congress and specifically our Committees. The Committees did not receive any notifications, materials, briefings, or other information about this major change – or any of the previous major personnel changes – in order to evaluate it,” wrote the ranking Democratic members on the Senate and House Appropriations subcommittees on the Interior, Sen. Jeff Merkley and Rep. Chellie Pingree, respectively, in a letter to Burgum’s office Friday.