The Republican administration must halt much of its dramatic downsizing of the federal workforce, a California judge ordered on Friday.
Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco issued the emergency order in a lawsuit filed by trade unions and cities last week, one of multiple legal challenges to Republican President Donald Trump’s efforts to shrink the size of a federal government he calls bloated and expensive.
“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,” Illston wrote.
“As a group of conservative former government officials and advisers have written to the court, ‘Unchecked presidential power is not what the Framers had in mind’.”
The temporary restraining order directs numerous federal agencies to halt acting on the president’s workforce executive order signed in February and a subsequent memo issued by the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
The order, which expires in 14 days, does not require departments to rehire people. Plaintiffs asked that the effective date of any agency action be postponed and that departments stop implementing or enforcing the executive order, including taking any further action.
