A federal judge in San Francisco has ordered the Trump administration to immediately halt its efforts to lay off roughly 4,100 federal workers during the government shutdown, saying the move is unlawful.
US District Judge Susan Illston said during a hearing Wednesday that she was granting a request from unions representing federal workers for an emergency order pausing the layoffs that began last Friday.
“As of right now, the (temporary restraining order) is in effect,” Illston said. The order, the judge said, bars the administration for now from moving ahead with any layoffs for members of several unions that sued over the plans, or issuing any new layoff notices for those unions’ members. It will remain in effect while the unions’ legal challenge plays out.
The unions, which sued the administration late last month after officials said they would lay off workers amid the shutdown, have argued that the government is unlawfully using the lapse in funding as justification for the layoffs.
Illston, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, said she saw evidence suggesting the administration had “taken advantage of the lapse in government spending, in government functioning, to assume that that all bets are off, that the laws don’t apply to them anymore.”
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