A federal judge in California granted a temporary restraining order requested by unions representing 4,000 federal workers fired during the government shutdown.
The order blocks the Trump administration from issuing reduction-in-force notices for two weeks, according to a lawyer from one of the unions.
In the transcript of proceedings from the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California, Judge Susan Illston says she believes the plaintiffs in the case — unions representing federal workers fired during the shutdown — are likely to prove that what the administration has done is illegal.
“The activities that are being undertaken here are contrary to the laws,” Illston said in Wednesday’s decision, according to NBC News. “You can’t do this in a nation of laws.”
Illston said that the Trump administration had “taken advantage of the lapse in government spending and government functioning to assume that all bets are off, the laws don’t apply to them anymore, and they can impose the structures that they like on the government situation that they don’t like.”
Rushab Sangvhi, general counsel for the American Federation of Government Employees, is one of the plaintiffs in the matter.
“At least for the next 14 days, the administration will be unable to issue any new reduction-in-force notices at any agencies that we sued, and it will also be unable to implement the reduction-in-force notices that it has already issued,” Sangvhi said.
“When the government does something, right, it can’t be for arbitrary reasons, it can’t be based on some unlawful motive, it has to be a reasoned decision,” he said. “Just because for this short period of time, there’s a lapse in funding, Congress hasn’t appropriated money, that doesn’t mean those agencies don’t exist anymore or the components of those agencies that they’re trying to RIF don’t exist anymore.”
Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, who represents tens of thousands of federal workers, told NBC News the Trump administration’s actions and threats are not working to end the shutdown.
“If he really wanted to put pressure on, he should say, as soon as we find the deal, there will be no more firings, there will be no more cancellation of projects,” he said. “That will put pressure on, but just threatening to do what he’s already doing, that really isn’t pressure.”
The court’s decision comes as the White House threatens more firings.
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