Update: This story was updated at 7:30 p.m. Eastern on Dec. 4, 2025, after a federal judge granted the unions\u2019 request for a temporary restraining order.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
A federal judge in San Francisco is temporarily blocking the State Department from finalizing hundreds of employee layoffs.<\/p>\n
Judge Susan Illston approved a temporary restraining order<\/a> on Thursday, preventing the department from officially terminating more than 200 employees, most of them Foreign Service officers.<\/p>\n Separately, federal employee unions are asking the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to reverse more layoffs than agencies have allowed under a spending deal that ended the recent government shutdown.<\/p>\n The American Federation of Government Employees and the American Foreign Service Association filed the emergency request for a temporary restraining order to bar the \u201cimminent and unlawful execution\u201d of reduction in force notices the State Department sent this summer.<\/p>\n ]]><\/p>\n \u201cThe severe threats to the public presented by the imminent State Department actions necessitate a temporary pause to protect the status quo for plaintiffs and the employees they represent who are adversely impacted by these imminent separations,\u201d the emergency request states.<\/p>\n The emergency request is part of an ongoing lawsuit that unions filed on the eve of the government shutdown, which blocked the Trump administration from conducting widespread layoffs during a lapse in congressional funds.<\/p>\n The amended lawsuit<\/a> states that several agencies, including the State Department, aren\u2019t fully adhering to a provision in the shutdown-ending spending bill that temporarily blocked the Trump administration from carrying out layoffs.<\/p>\n The nonprofit Democracy Forward, which is also part of the lawsuit, said the amended lawsuit seeks to reverse \u201cother unlawful RIF actions\u201d at the Small Business Administration and the General Services Administration, as well as the departments of Education and Defense.<\/p>\n \u201cThose RIFs would violate the federal legislation that ended the federal government shutdown, which prohibits implementation of any RIFs through January 30,\u201d the amended complaint states.<\/p>\n The continuing resolution<\/a> Congress passed on Nov. 12 states that \u201cany reduction in force proposed, noticed, initiated, executed, implemented, or otherwise taken by an executive agency between October 1, 2025, and the date of enactment, shall have no force or effect.\u201d<\/p>\n It also states that between Nov. 12, 2025 and Jan. 30, 2026, \u201cno federal funds may be used to initiate, carry out, implement, or otherwise notice a reduction in force to reduce the number of employees within any department.\u201d<\/p>\n ]]><\/p>\n Agencies, however, have followed a narrower interpretation of the stopgap spending bill, and have only reinstated federal employees who received RIF notices between Oct. 1 and Nov. 12. The amended lawsuit states that interpretation of the continuing resolution \u201cis significantly under-inclusive.\u201d<\/p>\n