US judge blocks State Department's planned overhaul, mass layoffs

A federal judge in California on Friday temporarily blocked the U.S. State Department from implementing an agency-wide reorganization plan that includes 2,000 layoffs.

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco during a virtual hearing said her May ruling barring federal agencies from laying off tens of thousands of employees at the direction of President Donald Trump applies to the planned overhaul announced by the State Department last month.

U.S. Department of Justice lawyer Alexander Resar said in response that the State Department would not issue layoff notices that were scheduled to go out on Saturday.
The State Department had argued that its reorganization plan submitted to Congress last month predated a February executive order and subsequent White House memo directing mass layoffs, placing it outside the scope of Illston’s decision.

The ruling came in a lawsuit by a group of unions, nonprofits and municipalities.
The State Department and lawyers for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Trump administration has already asked the U.S. Supreme Court to pause Illston’s May decision while it appeals. Illston blocked about 20 federal agencies, including the State Department, from carrying out plans to downsize and restructure at Trump’s direction, pending the outcome of the lawsuit.

But the department told Congress in late May that it still planned to notify about 2,000 employees this month that they were being laid off and would reorganize or eliminate more than 300 bureaus and offices.

The State Department in May said it would undertake its reorganization plan by July 1, and has not commented about the potential impact of the lawsuit.

In a court filing on Friday, Daniel Holler, the deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, said the agency’s plan was crafted by Rubio and a small group of advisers to streamline operations and not in response to any directive from Trump.

Illston, in her May decision, said the White House cannot order the restructuring of federal agencies without authorization from Congress.

The ruling was the broadest of its kind against the government overhaul that was spearheaded by Trump ally Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, who had a swift and acrimonious falling out with the Republican president last week.

Musk on Wednesday said he regretted some of the comments he had made about Trump in social media posts and deleted some of them, including one signaling support for Trump’s impeachment.