Update: This story was updated at 7:30 p.m. Eastern on Dec. 4, 2025, after a federal judge granted the unions’ request for a temporary restraining order.
A federal judge in San Francisco is temporarily blocking the State Department from finalizing hundreds of employee layoffs.
Judge Susan Illston approved a temporary restraining order on Thursday, preventing the department from officially terminating more than 200 employees, most of them Foreign Service officers.
Separately, federal employee unions are asking the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to reverse more layoffs than agencies have allowed under a spending deal that ended the recent government shutdown.
The American Federation of Government Employees and the American Foreign Service Association filed the emergency request for a temporary restraining order to bar the “imminent and unlawful execution” of reduction in force notices the State Department sent this summer.
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“The severe threats to the public presented by the imminent State Department actions necessitate a temporary pause to protect the status quo for plaintiffs and the employees they represent who are adversely impacted by these imminent separations,” the emergency request states.
The emergency request is part of an ongoing lawsuit that unions filed on the eve of the government shutdown, which blocked the Trump administration from conducting widespread layoffs during a lapse in congressional funds.
The amended lawsuit states that several agencies, including the State Department, aren’t fully adhering to a provision in the shutdown-ending spending bill that temporarily blocked the Trump administration from carrying out layoffs.
The nonprofit Democracy Forward, which is also part of the lawsuit, said the amended lawsuit seeks to reverse “other unlawful RIF actions” at the Small Business Administration and the General Services Administration, as well as the departments of Education and Defense.
“Those RIFs would violate the federal legislation that ended the federal government shutdown, which prohibits implementation of any RIFs through January 30,” the amended complaint states.
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.”
It also states that between Nov. 12, 2025 and Jan. 30, 2026, “no federal funds may be used to initiate, carry out, implement, or otherwise notice a reduction in force to reduce the number of employees within any department.”
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Agencies, however, have followed a narrower interpretation of the stopgap spending bill, and have only reinstated federal employees who received RIF notices between Oct. 1 and Nov. 12. The amended lawsuit states that interpretation of the continuing resolution “is significantly under-inclusive.”
Agencies recently told a federal court that they rescinded shutdown-era RIF notices for more than 3,600 employees.
The State Department sent RIF notices to nearly 1,350 employees in July. Most of those employees were officially separated from the agency in September.
But this Friday, Dec. 5, the department plans to officially remove nearly 250 Foreign Service employees and several civil service employees whose separation dates were postponed, because they recently gave birth or faced medical issues.
The State Department claims that the continuing resolution’s layoff protections only apply to RIF notices that went out after Oct. 1.
“Defendants are wrong,” the amended complaint states. “The plain language of the continuing resolution prohibits any actions implementing any RIFs of any employees at any agency between November 12, 2025 and January 30, 2026, and requires recission of any previously issued RIF notices (regardless of when they were issued) if the RIFs were implemented during the shutdown.”
The amended lawsuit also takes issue with how the State Department 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. But on that date, employees received a notice from the department’s human resources offices that said they would remain on administrative leave so the agency could correct “administrative errors.”
On Monday evening, employees received a notice that said they will be officially separated from the State Department this Friday.
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“The RIF notices were not reissued, and employees received nothing further from the State Department regarding the now-expired RIF notices until December 1, 2025,” the amended lawsuit states.
The State Department’s notice to employees cites “formal written guidance” from the Office of Management and Budget and the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel regarding RIFs that had been issued prior to the shutdown, but further implemented during or after the shutdown. The unions leading the lawsuit say that formal written guidance hasn’t been made publicly available.
“During the shutdown, the State Department continued to implement the stages of these RIFs in preparation for final separation of the employees, including by processing personnel paperwork in advance of the planned separations,” the amended complaint states.
The unions claim that without a temporary restraining order, State Department employees and their families will suffer “irreparable harm,” including a loss of income and health insurance benefits.
“For many of these employees, the imminent loss of employment means a sustained loss of income and benefits in a job market already flooded with unemployed former State Department and USAID employees,” the amended complaint states.
AFGE National President Everett Kelley said in a statement that “Congress clearly stated that no federal employees should lose their jobs due to a reduction-in-force for the duration of the continuing resolution.”
“This means that no RIF should be issued or acted upon, and any RIF terminations that occurred during the shutdown must be reversed,” Kelley said.
AFSA President John Dinkelman said in a statement that these “unlawful separations reveal a callous indifference to the rule of law and the people who carry out America’s diplomatic mission every day.”
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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