Protesters wave signs as they make their way to the Tesla headquarters in Palo Alto on Feb. 28, 2025. Photo by Anna Hoch-Kenney.
A federal judge on Friday paused the Trump Administration’s effort to institute a massive workforce reduction, handing a temporary victory to a coalition that includes Santa Clara and San Francisco counties.
In a 42-page emergency order, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston sided with the group of municipalities, unions and nonprofit groups that sued the White House on April 29, claiming that the president is violating the U.S. Constitution by radically remaking the federal government without Congressional approval.
“And when the President does so across every federal agency, he threatens the very constitutional foundation of this nation: ‘There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person,’” the complaint read.
Judge Illston agreed and issued a temporary restraining order lasting for the next 14 days, through May 23, “unless the Court finds good cause to extend it,” the order states.
The group of plaintiffs, which also includes the cities of Chicago and Baltimore, Harris County, Texas, King County, Washington, the American Federation of Government Employees, Vote Vets Action Fund and other nonprofit and labor groups, challenged an executive order that President Donald Trump signed in February that purported to “maximize efficiency and productivity.” It instructed various federal departments and agencies to prepare for “large-scale reductions in force” and empowered the Elon Musk-led taskforce, the Department of Government Efficiency, to work with the departments on hiring decisions.
The court order notes the massive scale of the proposed reductions. The Department of Health and Human Services, for example, is issuing “reduction in force” notices to 8,000 to 10,000 employees, while the Department of Energy has identified 8,500 positions that could be cut, nearly half its workforce. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is preparing to reduce its workforce by more than half, according to the order.
In her order, Illston rejected the argument from the White House that the coalition’s request was too late, coming after the executive order was signed and after the federal Office of Management and Budget issued a memorandum to implement the staffing reductions. She observed that when other plaintiffs challenged the executive order shortly after it was signed, government lawyers had argued that the challenge was “too ‘speculative’ to establish injury,” Illston wrote.
“Defendants cannot have it both ways,” the order states.
Illston wrote in her ruling that the presidents have the prerogative to “pursue new policy priorities and imprint their stamp on the federal government.”
“But to make large-scale overhauls of federal agencies, any president must enlist the help of his co-equal branch and partner, the Congress. Federal courts should not micromanage the vast federal workforce, but courts must sometimes act to preserve the proper checks and balances between the three branches of government,” the order stated.
She concluded that the “irreparable harm that plaintiffs will suffer in the absence of injunctive relief outweighs any burden placed on the government by this two-week pause.”
“In the context of a dynamic situation, the Court’s temporary order seeks to preserve the status quo and protect the power of the legislative branch,” she wrote.
County officials celebrated the reprieve. Santa Clara County Counsel Tony LoPresti said in a statement that the emergency order “puts a stop to the real and direct harm being caused by the Trump Administration’s reckless and chaotic efforts to dismantle the federal government as we know it.”
“As our overwhelming evidence shows, agencies are making these foundational changes because the president directed them to do so, and there is no constitutional basis for the president to do that,” LoPresti said. “The results have been heartbreaking: veterans unable to get health care; first responders unable to get situational awareness or assistance with firefighting and natural disaster response; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the first time unable to help public health departments across the country dealing with measles outbreaks.”
The court order lists specific impacts that the federal directives may have on the plaintiffs. In Santa Clara County, for example, could spell the suspension of funding for Head Start, a federally funded learning program for infants and preschoolers. The federal workers with whom county staff worked for grant renewals had all been laid off and their San Francisco office closed, according to the court order.
“Facing uncertainty about whether its grant will be approved before funding expires, the county has notified more than one hundred early learning program workers that they might lose their jobs on July 1, 2025,” Illston wrote, noting that Congress had reauthorized the national Head Start program and established details for its administration.
Federal staffing shortages and other dramatic changes to federal government operations make it more difficult for local governments to effectively deliver programs and services, county officials said in a statement after the ruling. It also makes intergovernmental work more difficult, slow and cumbersome for state and local jurisdictions.
San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu said in a statement that Trump is “illegally attempting to dismantle the federal government with a stroke of a pen on an executive order.”
“The president does not have authority to radically restructure federal agencies through mass layoffs,” Chiu said. “Trump is ignoring constitutional checks and balances and trying to act as both president and Congress. These dramatic and illegal changes make it extremely difficult for local governments to effectively deliver programs and services to our communities. We appreciate the court recognizing the disastrous harms we are facing and immediately pausing these unlawful actions.”
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