Judge extends ban on Trump firing federal workers during government shutdown
A traffic light shows red in front of the US Capitol, in Washington DC , October 14, 2025.
Celal Gunes/ | Anadolu | Getty Images
A federal judge on Tuesday extended a temporary order blocking the Trump administration’s plans to fire thousands of federal employees during the government shutdown.
The order, called a preliminary injunction, prohibits the administration from issuing reduction-in-force, or RIF, notices until the government reopens, Judge Susan Illston said during a hearing in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.
Illston had imposed a short-term firing freeze, known as a temporary restraining order or TRO, on Oct. 15.
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, one of the labor-union plaintiffs in the lawsuit, praised the judge’s latest order.
“Today’s ruling is another victory for federal workers and our ongoing efforts to protect their jobs from an administration hellbent on illegally firing them,” AFSCME President Lee Saunders said in a statement.
The American Federation of Government Employees, another plaintiff in the case, called the ruling a “big win for federal workers!”
The labor unions, which represent federal civilian employees, filed the lawsuit on the eve of the shutdown to preemptively challenge the Trump administration’s stated plans to conduct mass layoffs in the event of a lapse in federal funding.
President Donald Trump has said that the shutdown — which is now the second-longest ever — gives his administration an “opportunity” to slash what he has described as “Democrat Agencies.”
Days after the shutdown began, the plaintiffs expanded their lawsuit to include dozens of additional federal agencies and their leaders.
The Trump administration said it had issued around 4,000 RIFs on Oct. 10.
White House Budget Director Russell Vought, an author of the right-wing government policy guidebook known as Project 2025, said the following week that the total RIF number would likely “end up being north of 10,000.”
Vought’s remark came on the same day that Illston granted her TRO, which slammed the mid-shutdown layoff plans as “unprecedented in our country’s history.”
The White House, asked for comment on Tuesday’s preliminary injunction order, referred CNBC to the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, which did not immediately respond.
Illston’s ruling is “a major blow to the Trump-Vance administration’s unlawful attempt to make the Project 2025 playbook a reality by targeting our nation’s career public servants, who work for all Americans,” said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of the legal group Democracy Forward, which represents AFSCME in the lawsuit.
“Our team is honored to represent the civil servants who are fighting back against President Trump’s dangerous agenda, and to have won this crucial injunction that will help stop federal workers from continuing to be targeted and harassed by this administration during the shutdown,” Perryman said in a statement.
