Why Federal Judge Blocked Trump Plan to Fire Thousands of Furloughed Workers

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A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s plan to permanently terminate thousands of furloughed federal employees during the government shutdown that began October 1, 2025. The move thrusts a constitutional conflict over the federal workforce into the national spotlight.

At the heart of the dispute is the administration’s “Schedule Policy/Career” initiative—a revival and expansion of the controversial “Schedule F” plan from 2020—which aims to strip job protections from tens of thousands of career civil servants.

In This Article

• A federal judge issued a TRO blocking the Trump administration’s plan to fire thousands of furloughed federal employees during the October government shutdown.
• The plan relied on a revived “Schedule Policy/Career” order, allowing mass reclassification and at-will termination of civil servants.
• More than 4,000 workers got notices; estimates reached 10,000.
• Judge Illston found the move likely violated civil service and due process laws.
• The case now moves toward a preliminary injunction and potential appeal.

So What?

• Civil service protections could be weakened or upheld depending on the outcome.
• The case tests presidential power vs. legal limits on firing career employees.
• A ruling could set a major precedent for how future administrations reshape the federal workforce.
• Disruptions to agencies like EPA and CISA could affect national security and public services.

The Shutdown Standoff

Breaking with Precedent

Historically, government shutdowns resulting from a lapse in congressional appropriations have led to temporary furloughs of non-essential federal workers. These employees are placed in a non-pay, non-duty status but have traditionally returned to their jobs with back pay once funding is restored.

The first weeks of the October 2025 shutdown saw a sharp departure from this norm. The Trump administration, through the Office of Management and Budget, directed federal agencies to move beyond temporary furloughs and begin implementing permanent layoffs through a reduction-in-force (RIF).

Initial notices of termination were sent to over 4,000 employees. OMB Director Russell Vought indicated this was merely a “snapshot” and that the total number could ultimately reach 10,000.

The layoffs were not uniform, targeting specific agencies and offices. The Department of Education, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency—an agency that has been a frequent administration target for its work countering election misinformation—were among those affected.

The administration’s public justification for the firings was explicitly political. President Trump stated that many of those losing their jobs were in “Democrat oriented” areas and that the RIF plans were aimed at federal programs “not consistent with the President’s priorities.”

Federal employee unions immediately condemned the action as illegal and a dangerous escalation. The move suggests a strategic leveraging of the fiscal crisis not merely as a negotiating tactic with Congress, but as an opportunity to enact a long-held policy goal: reshaping the federal workforce by removing employees perceived as obstacles to the administration’s agenda.

Judge Illston’s Restraining Order

In response to the termination notices, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest union representing federal workers, filed an emergency lawsuit seeking to halt the firings. The case, brought before Judge Susan Illston of the U.S. District Court, resulted in a swift temporary restraining order against the administration. Importantly, a temporary restraining order does not resolve the underlying claims; it merely preserves the status quo while the court considers whether to issue a preliminary injunction or reach a final decision.

Judge Illston’s ruling blocked the administration from laying off any additional federal employees because of or during the shutdown. It also froze any further action on the RIF notices that had already been issued for at least two weeks.

While a temporary order, the judge’s reasoning signaled strong preliminary agreement with the union’s arguments. The core legal logic: the administration appeared to be improperly using a lapse in appropriations as authority to enact a permanent workforce reduction.

The judge characterized the mass firings as likely unlawful, suggesting that the AFGE had demonstrated sufficient likelihood of success on the merits to warrant immediate judicial intervention. The ruling effectively separates the issue of a temporary funding gap from the administration’s authority to terminate employees, viewing the latter as a distinct action that must comply with established civil service laws, regardless of the government’s funding status.

Schedule Policy/Career Explained

The administration’s attempt to terminate thousands of workers during the shutdown is the direct application of a broader policy designed to fundamentally alter the U.S. civil service.

From Schedule F to Policy/Career

The policy originated on October 21, 2020, when President Trump signed Executive Order 13957, “Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service.” After President Biden rescinded that order upon taking office, the Trump administration reinstated and amended it on January 20, 2025, renaming it “Schedule Policy/Career.”

The order’s central mechanism is the creation of a new job classification within the “excepted service”—a category of federal jobs not subject to the same competitive hiring rules and protections as the majority of the civil service.

This new schedule is designed for career employees in positions deemed to be of a “confidential, policy-determining, policymaking, or policy-advocating character”.

The consequences for an employee whose position is moved into Schedule Policy/Career are profound. They are stripped of their statutory due process rights, including the right to advance notice of removal and the right to appeal an adverse action, such as a firing, to the independent Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB).

This effectively converts them from career civil servants, who can only be fired for cause, into at-will employees who can be dismissed for any reason or no reason at all, much like political appointees.

Potential Scope

The potential scope of this reclassification is vast and deliberately ambiguous. The executive order directs agency heads to identify positions for conversion based on broad criteria, such as “substantive participation in the development or drafting of regulations and guidance,” “the supervision of attorneys,” or even “viewing, circulating, or otherwise working with proposed regulations, guidance, executive orders, or other non-public policy proposals”.

Experts estimate this could apply to tens of thousands, or potentially hundreds of thousands, of federal workers, far beyond the senior executive ranks.

The Case For: Accountability

Proponents frame Schedule Policy/Career as necessary reform to rein in an unaccountable and inefficient federal bureaucracy. The central argument: a president, duly elected by the American people, cannot effectively implement their policy agenda if faced with a permanent civil service that may be resistant or ideologically opposed to their goals.

By making employees in policy-related roles at-will, the policy is said to increase flexibility and enhance accountability to elected officials.

This view is a cornerstone of “Project 2025,” a comprehensive policy and personnel blueprint for a new conservative administration organized by The Heritage Foundation. This project explicitly advocates for reviving Schedule F as a means “to bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will” and to “root out the deep state.”

In an apparent effort to counter criticism that the policy establishes a political loyalty test, the 2025 executive order includes a new provision not found in the 2020 version. It states that employees in Schedule Policy/Career “are not required to personally or politically support the current President or the policies of the current administration.”

However, the order immediately follows this with the requirement that they must “faithfully implement administration policies to the best of their ability.” While this language provides a legal defense against claims of compelled speech, the underlying structure of at-will employment creates a powerful incentive for employees to demonstrate alignment with the administration’s agenda to ensure their job security.

The Case Against: Return to Patronage

Opponents argue that Schedule Policy/Career represents a grave threat to American governance and a return to the 19th-century “spoils system,” where government jobs were handed out based on political patronage rather than merit.

Watchdog groups like the Project on Government Oversight and federal unions contend that the policy is a thinly veiled attempt to dismantle the non-partisan, professional civil service.

The core fear: it would empower a president to purge tens of thousands of career experts—scientists, attorneys, policy analysts, and program managers—and replace them with “unqualified political flunkies” and “partisan lapdogs” whose primary qualification is personal loyalty to the president, not professional competence or a commitment to their constitutional oath.

A review of 96 studies on the subject found that politicization is consistently and negatively related to government performance and positively related to corruption, leading the authors to conclude that converting career employees to Schedule F “is likely to degrade government performance.”

Organizations like Protect Democracy warn that politicizing the civil service facilitates abuse of power. It could allow an administration to redirect government functions away from the public interest and toward the president’s personal or political interests, making government benefits, contracts, regulatory decisions, and law enforcement actions contingent on shows of personal fidelity.

The Legal Foundation

The battle over Schedule Policy/Career is fundamentally a clash over the legal architecture governing the federal workforce. Two pieces of legislation are central to this conflict: the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 and the Administrative Procedure Act.

The Civil Service Reform Act

For nearly a century after the Pendleton Act of 1883 began professionalizing the federal workforce, the system remained in need of major reform. That reform came with the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (CSRA), landmark legislation signed by President Jimmy Carter.

Passed in the wake of the Watergate scandal, which highlighted the dangers of using government agencies for political ends, the CSRA’s explicit goal was to ensure a “competent, honest, and productive Federal work force” that was managed according to merit system principles and was “free from prohibited personnel practices.”

The CSRA codified nine Merit System Principles, which serve as the philosophical core of the modern civil service. These principles mandate that hiring and promotion be based on ability and fair, open competition, and they explicitly prohibit discrimination based on political affiliation, race, religion, or other non-merit factors.

To enforce these principles, the Act created a new tripartite structure:

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM): Serves as the federal government’s central human resources agency, providing management guidance and regulations.

The Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA): Oversees labor-management relations, including the rights of federal employees to form unions and engage in collective bargaining.

The Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB): An independent, quasi-judicial agency designed to protect employees from “unfair or unwarranted practices.” Its primary function is to hear and adjudicate appeals from federal employees who have been fired, suspended, or otherwise disciplined.

This structure was deliberately designed by Congress to place statutory limits on the executive’s ability to hire and fire at will, creating a professional workforce insulated from raw political pressure.

The Administrative Procedure Act

The second legal pillar is the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 (APA). The APA serves as the fundamental “rulebook” for the federal government, governing the process by which executive branch agencies develop and issue regulations. Its purpose is to ensure that agency actions are not arbitrary but are the result of a reasoned, transparent, and legally grounded process.

For most significant rules—those that have the force and effect of law—the APA requires “notice-and-comment” rulemaking. This process has three essential steps:

Notice: The agency must publish a notice of the proposed rule in the Federal Register, outlining its legal authority and the substance of the proposal.

Comment: The agency must provide an opportunity for the public and interested parties to submit written comments, data, and arguments regarding the proposed rule.

Reasoned Decision: After considering the public comments, the agency must issue a final rule that includes a “concise general statement of their basis and purpose,” explaining its reasoning.

A critical principle of administrative law: an agency cannot simply repeal a rule that was created through this process by fiat. To rescind a legislative rule, the agency must generally use the same notice-and-comment process, providing a reasoned explanation for its change in policy.

The APA also provides the standards for judicial review, allowing courts to set aside agency actions found to be “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law.”

The Legal Challenges

Almost immediately after the Schedule Policy/Career executive order was issued in January 2025, it was met with a wave of litigation from federal employee unions and advocacy groups.

The Lawsuits

In late January and early February 2025, several major lawsuits were filed in federal court, primarily in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Key plaintiffs include:

• The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), which represents workers in 37 federal agencies.
• A joint lawsuit by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest federal employee union, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).
• Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), an organization representing public servants in environmental agencies.

These suits collectively argue that the executive order is unlawful on statutory and constitutional grounds.

Core Legal Arguments

Though filed separately, the lawsuits are built upon a common foundation of three central legal arguments.

The CSRA Argument: The plaintiffs contend that the executive order is based on a radical misinterpretation of the Civil Service Reform Act. The administration’s authority to create Schedule Policy/Career hinges on a specific phrase in the CSRA that allows the president to except from civil service protections positions of a “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character.”

The lawsuits argue that for decades, this language has been consistently understood by OPM, the courts, and Congress to apply only to a small number of non-career, senior political appointees, such as those in Schedule C of the excepted service. To expand this narrow exception to cover potentially hundreds of thousands of career civil servants is an “elephants-in-mouseholes mismatch” that fundamentally violates the intent of Congress to create a merit-based system.

The APA Argument: A crucial element of the Trump administration’s 2025 executive order was its attempt to unilaterally nullify a regulation finalized by OPM during the Biden administration in April 2024. That rule was specifically designed to counter a future Schedule F by codifying protections, such as guaranteeing that an employee who is involuntarily moved to a new job classification retains their accrued due process and appeal rights.

The Trump order declared this rule “invalid” without going through the legally required rulemaking process. The lawsuits argue this is a clear violation of the Administrative Procedure Act. Because the Biden-era rule was established through the formal notice-and-comment process, it can only be rescinded through that same process. An executive order cannot simply wish a duly promulgated regulation away.

The Constitutional Argument: This argument asserts that the executive order violates the Constitution itself. The Supreme Court has held that when a statute—like the CSRA—provides substantive restrictions on an employee’s removal (requiring “for cause” termination), it creates a constitutionally protected “property interest” in continued employment.

The Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause forbids the government from depriving a person of property without due process of law, which in this context means, at a minimum, notice and an opportunity to be heard before termination. The lawsuits argue that by reclassifying career employees into Schedule Policy/Career, the order unconstitutionally strips them of their accrued property interest in their jobs without affording them any due process.

A key D.C. Circuit precedent, Roth v. Brownell, held that reclassifying a position cannot be used to “obviate the requirements” of due process for the person already holding that job.

The Government’s Defense

Based on the legal arguments deployed when Schedule F was first challenged in 2020, the administration is expected to mount a defense focused on procedural grounds rather than the merits of the policy itself. The two primary defenses will likely be:

• Ripeness: The government will argue that the lawsuits are premature and not “ripe” for judicial review. They will claim that because no specific employee has yet been reclassified and subsequently fired under the new order, the plaintiffs have not suffered a concrete injury, and any harm is merely speculative.
• Exhaustion of Administrative Remedies: The administration will also likely contend that the federal courts are the wrong venue for this dispute. They will argue that any employee who is eventually harmed by the policy must first pursue and “exhaust” all available administrative remedies—such as an appeal to the MSPB or a complaint with the Office of Special Counsel—before they can bring a case in court.

Path to the Supreme Court

The legal battle is unfolding within a broader context of the Trump administration’s confrontational posture toward the judiciary.

Pattern of Defiance

Across a range of policy areas, the administration has reacted to judicial setbacks not with acquiescence, but with fervent rhetoric and assertions of expansive executive power. White House officials have publicly accused federal judges who rule against them of being “far-left activist judges” engaging in a “legal insurrection.”

This public relations strategy is paired with a legal one that asserts the president possesses broad, almost unreviewable “plenary authority” to direct the actions of the executive branch, particularly regarding the use of federal personnel.

This approach suggests that the administration does not see lower court rulings as the final word on the legality of its actions, but rather as illegitimate political roadblocks. The strategy appears to be built on the expectation of eventual vindication by a higher court, transforming the appellate process into a mechanism for bypassing unfavorable precedent and legal interpretations developed in the lower courts.

The D.C. Circuit

The next and most critical stage for the lawsuits challenging Schedule Policy/Career will be the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The D.C. Circuit is widely considered the nation’s most influential court on matters of administrative and regulatory law, sometimes unofficially called “the second highest court in the land.”

Its unique prominence stems from its jurisdiction. Because it covers Washington, D.C., it hears a disproportionate number of cases challenging the actions of federal agencies headquartered there.

Recognizing this expertise, Congress has often written statutes that grant the D.C. Circuit exclusive jurisdiction to review federal rulemaking and other agency actions of national significance. The court’s judges are therefore steeped in the nuances of the APA, the CSRA, and the constitutional separation of powers.

Its ruling in this case will be meticulously reasoned and will carry immense legal weight, setting the terms of the debate for any final appeal.

The Supreme Court

A conflict of this magnitude—pitting presidential authority against congressional statutes that structure the executive branch—is highly likely to be resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court. The administration has repeatedly expressed confidence that the Court’s conservative majority will be more sympathetic to its arguments for executive power.

A Supreme Court decision on Schedule Policy/Career would be a landmark ruling with the potential to fundamentally reshape American governance. A ruling in favor of the administration could effectively dismantle the merit-based civil service system that has been in place for nearly 150 years, granting the president sweeping power to hire and fire vast swaths of the federal workforce.

A ruling against the administration would reaffirm the power of Congress to structure the executive branch and would serve as a powerful reinforcement of the legal and constitutional barriers designed to ensure a professional, non-partisan government accountable to the rule of law.

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