Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, SUPREME COURT NEWS—On heels of Ninth Circuit decision, Trump administration heads to SCOTUS to seek ability to continue RIFs, (Jun 3, 2025)

By Brandi O. Brown, J.D.

Trump’s team argues that the injunction issued by the district court “rests on the indefensible premise that the President needs explicit statutory authorization from Congress to exercise his core Article II authority to superintend the internal personnel decisions of the Executive Branch.”

Late last week, a divided Ninth Circuit panel upheld a district court’s preliminary injunction against the Trump administration’s attempts to lay off a broad swath of federal workers across a range of federal agencies. The appeals court found that the government had yet to show a single piece of evidence to support its allegation of irreparable injury resulting from the district court’s temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction.

SCOTUS intervention sought. Now, the Trump administration has appealed to the Supreme Court for relief, asking it to step in and stay the district court’s order and, in the meantime, to issue an immediate administrative stay of the district court’s order pending its consideration of the application. Trump’s team argues that the injunction issued by the district court “rests on the indefensible premise that the President needs explicit statutory authorization from Congress to exercise his core Article II authority to superintend the internal personnel decisions of the Executive Branch.”

Citing the High Court’s recent intervention “to stop a district court from undoing the effects of the lawful large-scale termination of probationary employees” in Office of Personnel Mgmt. v. American Fed’n of Gov’t Emps., the government argues that the Court “should take the same course here, where the injunction sweeps far more broadly—to cover most of the federal government—and even restricts the Executive in planning personnel actions pursuant to presidential direction.” The government argues that the RIFs are “indisputably permitted by federal law” and also argues that they “have not yet been finalized,” that the Executive Order “directs preparation of RIFS only as ‘consistent with applicable law,’” and that “any challenges to the RIFs themselves are channeled into specialized administrative and judicial review schemes concerning federal employment under” the CSRA and the FSLMRA.

Background. On February 13, 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order 14210 announcing a “critical transformation of the Federal bureaucracy.” The order instructed federal agencies to undertake preparations for large-scale reductions in force and directed each agency head to submit for approval an Agency RIF and Reorganization Plan (ARRP).

In the wake of these changes, the plaintiffs—a collection of unions, nonprofit organizations, and local governments—filed suit against the government alleging that the executive order and the implementing ARRPs violated the constitutional separation of powers and the APA.

On May 9, the district court issued a TRO against the government and compelled discovery of the ARRPs and documents related to their implementation. The court later granted the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction. In response, the government appealed, but the Ninth Circuit affirmed and denied the government’s request for an emergency stay of the preliminary injunction.

The docket is No. 24A1174.

News: SupremeCourtNews WhiteHouseNews PublicEmployees Layoffs Discharge