The Trump administration’s plan for mass federal layoffs will test the bounds of executive power in court.
In the hours leading up to the government shutdown, a group of unions filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, arguing its threats to distribute reduction-in-force notices during the shutdown violate federal law.
The question at the heart of the case will be whether a government shutdown provides a legal justification for the White House’s threat to fire federal employees. As a fight plays out on Capitol Hill about which party is responsible for a shutdown, the union’s complaint sets up a high-stakes legal battle that could have massive implications for the federal bureaucracy.
“Any [reduction in force] that does take place will be one that we know we can win in a court of law,” a senior White House official told NOTUS of the impending notices, adding, “We’re no stranger to lawsuits.”
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The White House budget director, Russell Vought, “knows these laws better than anyone,” the official said, specifying that anything they do will be “well above the law, in our legal opinion.”
Rushab Sanghvi, general counsel for the American Federation of Government Employees, one of the unions in the suit, told NOTUS that “there’s no basis” for the White House’s directive.
Previous shutdown guidance from the White House claims that “furloughs during a shutdown are what you need to do, not RIFs,” said Sanghvi. “So it’s contradictory to their own previous statements.” (The unions’ complaint states that the White House did not address why the position changed.)
Asked if the intention behind the RIFs went beyond simple cost saving matters, a senior White House official did not directly answer. But the official acknowledged the unions’ arguments that RIFs had never been done before in a shutdown.
“I guess we are setting precedent, by nature of doing them,” the official said.
Democrats dispute the idea that a shutdown changes the legality of mass federal firings.
“A shutdown does not give the president any additional ability to fire people or to do what he is doing today,” Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, told NOTUS.
“He’s just taking this unprecedented action to hurt people,” Murray added, “to try and intimidate all of us who are fighting to make sure average citizens don’t see their health care increases by over half they cannot afford it.”
As for how Democratic lawmakers can push back on the firings, Murray said she will be following the unions’ case. (Members of Congress have limited standing in cases against the executive branch.)
Republicans in Congress have defended the firings as necessary because of dwindling federal resources during a shutdown — and if the government opened the RIFs would stop.
“It could end today, if the Senate Democrats would come to their senses and do the right thing for the American people,” Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters Thursday. “But if they don’t, and if they keep the government closed, it’s going to get more and more people because the resources run out, and more and more things have to be reduced and eliminated.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Trump had never needed a shutdown to fire people before. The administration has fired thousands of federal employees this year through the Department of Government Efficiency.
“Guess what?” Jeffries said. “They’ve been firing federal employees all along.”
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