The State Department is telling some employees targeted by mass layoffs this summer that their official separation date is imminent — and is not affected by a shutdown-ending spending deal that forced some agencies to rescind layoff notices.
The department’s human resources office, in a notice sent Monday evening, said Foreign Service employees who received reduction-in-force notices on July 11 will be officially separated from the agency this Friday, Dec. 5.
According to the Bureau of Global Talent Management, State Department attorneys determined that a recent stopgap spending bill passed by Congress, which ended the longest government shutdown, does not require the agency to rescind any RIF notices that were sent before the shutdown.
“Following formal written guidance from both the Office of Management and Budget and Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel, the Department of State’s Office of the Legal Adviser has determined that completing the reductions in force (RIFs) noticed prior to the lapse in appropriations does not violate the Antideficiency Act (ADA) or any other restriction within HR 5371,” the memo obtained by Federal News Network states. “Given this determination, the Department will finalize your separation or involuntary retirement on Friday, December 5.”
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The department, as part of this update, has modified the official separation date for impacted employees.
Foreign Service employees were originally told they would be separated from the agency on Nov. 10, when the agency was still affected by the government shutdown. Those employees will now be separated from the State Department on Dec. 5
In a separate notice, Global Talent Management said the State Department is extending administrative leave for all Foreign Service employees who were scheduled for separation as part of the RIF.
“We are reviewing the administrative errors in all SF-50s issued on Friday, November 7, to ensure that all information is accurate,” the notice states, referring to a federal employee’s official employment record.
It’s not clear what administrative errors the department intends to correct. An employee’s SF-50 form shared with Federal News Network shows that Lew Olowski, the department’s top HR official, approved the RIFs to go into effect on Nov. 10. Federal News Network has reached out to the State Department for comment.
A Foreign Service officer who received a RIF notice told Federal News Network that the State Department “can’t just extend admin leave” to set a new separation date.
The Foreign Service officer, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation, said moving the original Nov. 10 separation date amounts to a “de facto reinstatement,” and that the department would need to issue entirely new RIF notices and provide at least a 60-day notice for that new separation date.
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“This entire action just seems patently unlawful, and I do not understand how the department plans to get away with it,” the Foreign Service officer said.
By law, each federal employee subject to a RIF “is entitled to a specific written notice at least 60 full days before the effective date of release.”
According to the SF-50 notice, employees eligible for severance will receive a lump-sum payment on Jan. 1, 2026.
The State Department laid off more than 1,300 employees on July 11. It sent RIF notices to more than 1,100 civil service employees and nearly 250 Foreign Service employees who were based in the United States at the time.
Senior department officials later told Congress that the RIF was the largest and most complex workforce reduction of its kind, and that they carried out the layoffs in consultation with the Office of Personnel Management.
Questions about the possibility of reinstatement focused only on laid-off Foreign Service officers, who were on administrative leave for a longer period than their civil service counterparts.
Foreign Service employees who received RIF notices were scheduled to be officially 120 days out from their RIF notices. But civil service employees who received RIF notices had only 60 days before their official separation. They left the department in early September.
The State Department and several other agencies have rejected calls from laid-off employees, unions and Democratic lawmakers who say more federal employees are eligible for reinstatement than what the Trump administration has allowed.
The American Foreign Service Association said last month that its interpretation of the continuing resolution passed by Congress on Nov. 12 blocks the State Department from moving forward with its layoff notices.
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The continuing resolution Congress passed on Nov. 12 states that “any 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.”
“We understand that Congress intended for this language to apply to as many federal employees as possible, including those who received layoff notices from the State Department on July 11,” AFSA wrote.
Democratic lawmakers say agencies aren’t reinstating as many federal employees as they should be under the spending deal.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) is leading the push for more RIF rescissions, along with several of his Democratic colleagues.
Kaine was one of eight Democratic senators who broke ranks to pass the stopgap spending bill, only after Republicans agreed to include language that would protect federal employees from layoffs at least through Jan. 30, 2026. Kaine and his colleagues backed standalone legislation during the shutdown that would have also barred the Trump administration from moving ahead with its most recent wave of mass layoffs.
Kaine, along with Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), and Patty Murray (D-Wash.), said the continuing resolution — particularly Section 120 of the stopgap bill — placed a moratorium on RIFs involving federal employees, and that the “moratorium is broad, clear and unequivocal.”
Agencies, however, have followed a narrower interpretation, and have only reinstated federal employees who received RIF notices between Oct 1 and Nov. 12. Agencies told a federal court that they rescinded shutdown-era RIF notices for more than 3,600 employees.
Federal News Network first reported that the Small Business Administration told 77 recently laid-off employees this week that they could get their jobs back, but rescinded that offer a day later.
An SBA spokesperson said in a statement that the agency “has determined that the most recent continuing resolution signed into law does not apply to any RIFs executed by the SBA.”
The Democratic senators told SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler that the agency is “unlawfully pursuing reductions in force,” and that dozens of recently laid-off employees the agency hasn’t reinstated “have a right to continue their employment.”
A group of 35 former General Services Administration employees also called on the agency to rescind their RIF notices, on the grounds that Congress intended to reinstate them.
GSA’s Associate General Counsel Daniel Hall told their attorneys in a Nov. 24 letter that the RIF notices “were issued before and separate from the lapse in appropriations occurring on October 1, 2025, and are outside of the intended scope of the Act and its provisions on RIFs.”
If you would like to contact this reporter about recent changes in the federal government, please email jheckman@federalnewsnetwork.com, or reach out on Signal at jheckman.29
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