Updated October 17, 2025 at 5:54 PM MDT
The Trump administration says it has paused work on only a small share of the roughly 4,000 mass layoffs announced since Oct. 1, in order to comply with a court order.
That includes more than 400 Department of Housing and Urban Development employees, 465 Education Department staff and 102 people with the Census Bureau, according to court filings released Friday.
Friday's court filing came amid a legal fight between the administration and two federal employee unions — the American Federation of Government Employees and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — which sued to block what they call "politically driven RIFs," or reductions in force.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in the Northern District of California granted the unions a temporary restraining order (TRO), halting some of the layoffs announced Oct. 10 and preventing new firings until she holds another hearing on Oct. 28 to consider an indefinite pause.
As part of her order, Illston also directed the government to provide the court with "an accounting of all RIFs, actual or imminent, that are enjoined by this TRO."
In more than 30 declarations filed by the defendant agencies Friday afternoon, Trump administration officials provided some details about the layoffs and repeatedly stated they would not proceed with RIFs blocked by the court order.
At the same time, the administration made clear it believes most of the employees who have already received layoff notices – or are expected to in the near future – are not covered by the court order, which only applies to programs or offices where the union plaintiffs have members or bargaining units.
In a status conference Friday evening, Illston said she didn't think agencies should be carrying out layoffs while the temporary restraining order was in effect and urged the government to "err on the side of caution."
She described this moment as a terrible situation, adding "We ought not make it worse."
The government's attorney Elizabeth Hedges repeatedly told the judge that the government was doing everything it could to comply with her order.
The plaintiffs' attorney Danielle Leonard repeatedly said the government had taken too narrow an interpretation of the order.
In some cases, agencies indicated they believed the court order does not apply to their employees because their agency no longer has an obligation to bargain with the unions.
Earlier this year, President Trump issued an executive order ending collective bargaining rights for most federal workers citing national security concerns, including at agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Thomas Nagy, a human resources official with HHS, referenced the executive order in his declaration to the court about the 982 RIFs at HHS announced since the shutdown.
"HHS has not issued any RIF notices implicated by the Court's TRO," he wrote. "Although CDC did previously have AFGE bargaining units, HHS terminated the relevant Collective Bargaining Agreements on August 26, 2025, pursuant to Executive Order 14251."
During the status hearing, the plaintiffs' attorney Leonard noted that the cancellation of collective bargaining rights at many agencies is under legal dispute. She asked the judge to clarify the wording of the temporary restraining order to ensure that employees of bargaining units affected by Trump's executive order are covered by the court order. Illston agreed to that change.
The plaintiffs also asked the court to add three more unions to the lawsuit and to the temporary restraining order, to broaden the number of employees who would be covered by the pause on RIFs.
Illston agreed to add the three unions to the temporary restraining order and said she would consider adding them as plaintiffs in the case at the next hearing.
At the hearing on Wednesday, Illston characterized the Trump administration's approach to the most recent RIFs as "ready, fire, aim" and said the administration was seeking to take advantage of the lapse in funding "to assume that all bets are off, that the laws don't apply to them anymore, and that they can impose the structures that they like on a government situation that they don't like."
In response, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called Illston "another far left, partisan judge."
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Leavitt added that the White House is confident their actions are legal and called the layoffs "an unfortunate consequence" of the government shutdown.
OMB Director Russ Vought said Wednesday close to 10,000 people could receive layoff notices during the shutdown, shortly before the judge blocked firing plans from taking effect.
While the White House promised "substantial" firings during the shutdown, the layoffs announced so far amount to only a fraction of the federal employees who have left the government since Trump returned to the White House in January.
Back in August, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) said roughly 300,000 federal workers would be gone from the government by the end of the year. OPM director Scott Kupor told news outlets that 80% of those departures were voluntary.
That means even prior to the shutdown, roughly 60,000 federal workers faced involuntary separation, according to Kupor's estimates.
Another 154,000 workers took the Trump administration's "Fork in the Road" buyout offer, according to OPM. Many who took the buyout told NPR they feared they would be fired if they didn't leave.
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