Dive Brief:
- San Francisco, Chicago, Baltimore and three U.S. counties joined a coalition of labor unions and nonprofits in a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s executive order directing federal agencies to make “large-scale” reductions in force.
- AFGE v. Trump, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Monday, asks the court to stop President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency workforce optimization initiative, saying only Congress is authorized to reorganize the federal government in the way Trump has directed.
- City leaders involved in the lawsuit say the mass layoffs strip cities of essential services they rely on like weather forecasting, disaster response and public health programs, making them less safe.
Dive Insight:
The American Federation of Government Employees, the lead plaintiff, stated in a press release that the lawsuit represents “the largest and most significant challenge to Trump’s authority to remake the government without congressional approval.”
Santa Clara County in California, Harris County in Texas and King County in Washington are also part of the coalition alongside AFGE; the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; Main Street Alliance; American Geophysical Union; American Public Health Association and others.
The DOGE layoffs threaten “vital services Americans depend on every day — from caring for veterans and safeguarding public health to protecting our environment and maintaining national security,” AFGE National President Everett Kelly said in a statement. “This illegal power grab would gut federal agencies, disrupt communities nationwide, and put critical public services at risk.”
Mass layoffs are already affecting essential services in Chicago, including the city’s weather and emergency preparedness, disaster response, ability to track and respond to health crises and ability to remediate contaminated property such as Superfund sites, the City of Chicago said in a press release. “The Trump Administration’s plan to gut the federal government threatens our way of life and would significantly impact our ability to keep residents and communities safe and healthy,” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said in a statement.
Baltimore Mayor Brandon M. Scott also weighed in on the suit. “In the last 100 days, the Trump administration has turned the federal government on its head, and Baltimore residents are paying the price,” he said in a statement. “Our city is home to thousands of public servants who fear for their jobs — not to mention all of the health care workers, community violence prevention organizations, and others whose work is threatened by the administration’s haphazard cuts.”
Several of the plaintiffs in AFGE v. Trump were also part of AFGE, AFL-CIO v. OPM, a lawsuit filed in the District Court of the Northern District of California against the Office of Personnel Management alleging that the mass termination of probationary employees was illegal and requesting the employees be immediately reinstated. The district court judge issued a preliminary injunction March 13 that ordered the administration to temporarily reinstate the 16,000 federal employees the suit covered while the lawsuit plays out. The U.S. Supreme Court paused that order earlier this month, saying the nonprofits don’t have a legal right to challenge the terminations.
In a separate suit, a U.S. district court judge in the District of Maryland issued a preliminary injunction April 1 ordering the temporary reinstatement of more than 23,500 probationary federal employees across 20 departments and agencies in 19 states.
