The Trump administration laid off over 4,100 employees on Friday amid the ongoing government shutdown, according to recent reports. A new court filing from the Department of Justice revealed this situation.
U.S. District Judge Susan Illston had mandated the government to provide information in a lawsuit filed by government unions just before the shutdown began.
Just hours before the judge’s deadline, the White House Budget Office announced plans to initiate a reduction in military forces. This followed several days of warnings regarding job cuts.
While different government agencies have acknowledged these layoffs, the recent court filing offers clearer insight into the scale of the cuts.
The Treasury Department faced the largest cuts, with 1,446 employees receiving reduction in force (RIF) notifications on Friday.
The Department of Health and Human Services also experienced significant layoffs, impacting around 1,100 to 1,200 workers, as noted in the filing.
Additionally, the cuts affected about 466 employees from the Department of Education, 442 from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, 315 from the Department of Commerce, 187 from the Department of Energy, and 176 from the Department of Homeland Security.
When totaled, at least 4,100 government workers found out they would be losing their jobs that day.
This count doesn’t even include more than 30 employees at the Environmental Protection Agency warned about potential layoffs, nor the 126 employees from the Federal Patent Office who lost their jobs on the first day of the shutdown.
The Justice Department’s filing indicated that “other defendant agencies, aside from those already mentioned, are currently considering whether to implement further RIFs due to ongoing appropriations losses.”
The American Federation of Public Employees, the largest federal employee union, alongside the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, filed the lawsuit just hours before federal funding was expected to expire on October 1.
The unions seek to block mass layoffs during the shutdown, arguing that the government can only furlough employees rather than permanently terminate their positions.
This lawsuit follows a series of threats from the White House regarding possible layoffs and cuts to federal programs if Democrats do not collaborate with Republicans to reopen the government, a threat that President Trump is now acting on.
Judge Illston, a former appointee under President Clinton, had already scheduled a hearing for next Thursday to address the unions’ requests.
However, as layoffs began rolling out on Friday, the union sought an immediate court order to pause the RIF process.
In its recent filing, the Justice Department contended that it lacked authority to address the union’s claims and stated that those claims would ultimately be unsuccessful.
“However, in their haste to litigate the validity of potential RIFs,” the Justice Department reported, “the plaintiffs overlooked essential limitations on the court’s role in hearing federal employment-related claims and offering emergency relief.”
