A federal judge Thursday denied a bid by labor unions to block the Trump administration from carrying out mass layoffs at federal agencies.
U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper indicated in his ruling that he was sympathetic to the National Treasury Employees Union and the four other unions that were seeking a restraining order to temporarily halt the layoffs, but said that federal court was not the appropriate venue for their lawsuit.
"NTEU fails to establish that it is likely to succeed on the merits because this Court likely lacks subject matter jurisdiction over the claims it asserts. The Court will therefore deny the unions’ motion for a temporary restraining order and, for the same reasons, deny their request for a preliminary injunction," Cooper wrote in his order.
The unions were seeking to block mass firings of probationary employees and President Donald Trump's Feb. 11 executive order for "large-scale reductions" in the federal workforce. The judge found that those types of claims should go before the Federal Labor Relations Authority, a three-member agency that handles federal labor disputes.
He noted claims heard there can be "followed by judicial review in the courts of appeals."
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The NTEU case was the broadest suit brought against the administration to date over federal layoffs. There's another suit pending in California involving probationary workers — employees who are recent hires or sometimes longtime employees who were recently moved into new positions — and other actions involving firings at individual agencies.
The NTEU suit also challenged the administration’s mass “deferred resignation” buyouts as part of the layoffs case. A federal judge in Boston last week allowed that program to proceed because the unions didn’t have legal standing to challenge the plan. The White House has said about 75,000 workers accepted the offer to resign now with pay and benefits through September.
Doreen Greenwald, the national president of NTEU, called Thursday's decision by Cooper "a temporary setback."
"The lawsuit we filed with our labor union partners will be heard and federal employees will get their day in court to challenge the unlawful mass firings and other attacks on their jobs, their agencies, and their service to the country. Already too many federal employees and their families have been devastated by these indiscriminate layoffs, and soon their local economies will feel that pain, too," she said in a statement, calling the administration's actions "an illegal end-run on Congress."
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling.
The judge began his 16-page ruling on a sympathetic note.
"The first month of President Trump’s second administration has been defined by an onslaught of executive actions that have caused, some say by design, disruption and even chaos in widespread quarters of American society. Affected citizens and their advocates have challenged many of these actions on an emergency basis in this Court and others across the country," he wrote.
"Certain of the President’s actions have been temporarily halted; others have been permitted to proceed, at least for the time being. These mixed results should surprise no one. Federal district judges are duty-bound to decide legal issues based on even-handed application of law and precedent—no matter the identity of the litigants or, regrettably at times, the consequences of their rulings for average people."
The administration began mass firings this month, including 3,000 people at the U.S. Forest Service and more than 1,000 at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Other agencies that have been hit with layoffs include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Homeland Security, the Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration.
The administration is aiming to cut up to 10% of the federal workforce.
