Dem
47
GOP
53
Yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston, a Bill Clinton appointee in Northern California, ruled that the layoffs—or reductions in force, as OMB Director Russell Vought prefers to describe them—are illegal. Specifically, she wrote: "The evidence suggests that the Office of Management and Budget, OMB, and the Office of Personnel Management, OPM, have taken advantage of the lapse in government spending, in government functioning, to assume that all bets are off, that the laws don't apply to them anymore and that they can impose the structures that they like on a government situation that they don't like."
The judge pressed the DoJ lawyers to explain why the layoffs were legal, given the civil service protections many federal workers have. The lawyers said they were not prepared to argue the merits of the case this early. The judge shot back: "But it's happening. This hatchet is falling on the heads of employees all across the nation, and you're not even prepared to address whether that's legal." Then she ruled that the government is banned from issuing any reduction in force notices for the time being. Needless to say, to be continued. (V)