A demonstrator holds a poster the day before a partial government shutdown takes effect at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., September 30, 2025, the day Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) address fired federal workers who hold weekly sit-ins outside the U.S. Capitol.
Annabelle Gordon Reuter
A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from laying off federal workers during the ongoing government shutdown.
The temporary restraining order was issued five days after the administration issued layoff notices to more than 4,000 federal employees.
The order prevents the Trump administration from taking any action to finalize the layoffs of these workers or issuing RIFs to other federal employees protected by the two unions that have filed suit to block the layoffs.
“The activities that are taking place here are against the law,” San Francisco U.S. District Judge Susan Yvonne Illston told administration lawyers Wednesday at a hearing in which they issued the TRO.
“You can’t do something like this in a country of laws,” Illston said, according to NBC News. “And while there is a law here, what is stated here is not within the law.”
The judge cited comments by President Donald Trump and White House Budget Director Russell Vought that suggested the workers were fired to target programs that were clearly pro-Democrats.
Illston said in a written order issued late Wednesday that the layoffs during the shutdown are “unprecedented.”
“It is also far from normal for the regime to fire front-line civilian officials during a major war.
They shut down government agencies as a way to punish political opponents,” Illston wrote.
“But this is exactly what President Trump did in a social media post on the second day of the government shutdown, announcing what he was going to do: ‘Today is PROJECT 2025. I met with Russ Vought of Fame to determine which of the many Democratic institutions (most of which are political frauds) he recommends be cut, and whether those cuts are temporary or permanent. I can’t believe a radical leftist Democrat said this to me.
Two unions representing tens of thousands of federal employees have asked Illston to block RIF, and Illston’s order applies to all employees represented by those unions. He scheduled a hearing on Oct. 28 on the union’s request for a preliminary injunction to continue to block the Trump administration from reopening RIF. The unions are the American Federation of Government Employees and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees.
The Trump administration has threatened to lay off workers during the government shutdown, and the president has repeatedly said the cuts were aimed at “Democratic institutions” and leadership.
Shortly before Mr. Illston issued his order blocking layoffs, Mr. Vought said in an interview on “The Charlie Kirk Show” that he expected “more than 10,000” jobs would be cut due to the federal government shutdown.
According to NBC, Illston said the Trump administration assumed that they could “take advantage of the decline in government spending and government function to assume that all bets are off, the law no longer applies, and they can impose the structures they like on a government landscape they don’t like.”
The judge also said he believed the union could prove that the Trump administration’s actions were illegal and “arbitrary and capricious.”
Illston’s order came on the 15th day of the government shutdown, just before a stopgap funding bill to end it failed in the Senate for the ninth time.
Democracy Forward, an advocacy group that represents unions in court, praised the judge’s order.
“The president seems to think the government shutdown is distracting people from his administration’s harmful and illegal actions, but Americans are holding him accountable, including in the courts,” said Skye Perryman, CEO of Democracy Forward.
“Today’s statements by the court make clear that the President’s targeting of federal employees, straight out of the Project 2025 playbook, is unlawful,” Perryman said.
“Our public servants do the people’s work, and the games they play with their livelihoods are cruel, illegal, and a threat to all of us.”
