A federal judge on Thursday denied a bid by labor unions to halt the Trump administration’s sweeping federal workforce reductions, marking a significant victory for the White House as it moves forward with mass layoffs across government agencies.
U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper ruled against the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) and four other unions that sought an emergency restraining order to block the firings. While he expressed sympathy for the workers affected, Cooper made it clear that his court lacked jurisdiction over the matter.
“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,” Cooper wrote in his decision. “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.”
The unions had challenged President Donald Trump’s February 11 executive order authorizing “large-scale reductions” in the federal workforce, including layoffs of probationary employees—those who are either new hires or long-time workers recently reassigned to new positions. Cooper ruled that such disputes should be handled by the Federal Labor Relations Authority, which oversees federal employment matters, rather than the district court.
The lawsuit was the broadest challenge yet to Trump’s aggressive overhaul of the federal bureaucracy. Other lawsuits, including one in California targeting the administration’s handling of probationary employees, remain pending. Additionally, a federal judge in Boston last week allowed the administration’s “deferred resignation” buyout program to proceed, dismissing union objections on the grounds that they lacked legal standing to challenge it. Under that program, 75,000 federal employees accepted an offer to resign with pay and benefits through September.
NTEU President Doreen Greenwald called the ruling “a temporary setback” but vowed to continue fighting in court.
“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,” Greenwald said. “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.”
The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but the administration has made it clear that these cuts are part of a broader strategy to shrink the federal workforce and rein in government spending. The administration has already laid off thousands of employees across multiple agencies, including 3,000 workers at the U.S. Forest Service and more than 1,000 at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Other agencies affected include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Transportation, and the Federal Aviation Administration. The ultimate goal? A 10% reduction in the federal workforce.
Judge Cooper, in his 16-page ruling, acknowledged the sweeping impact of Trump’s second-term executive actions, which he noted had caused widespread disruption across the country.
“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,” Cooper wrote. “Certain of the President’s actions have been temporarily halted; others have been permitted to proceed, at least for the time being.”
He also emphasized that his decision was based strictly on legal precedent, regardless of its consequences.
“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.”
