--- title: Trump’s Shutdown Layoffs Could Be Stuck in Court for Months description: One problem with Trump's plan: enacting permanent staffing cuts during a shutdown may be illegal under federal law. canonical: https://time.com/7322826/trumps-shutdown-layoffs-legal-analysis/ author: Brian Bennett article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2025-10-02T22:27:13.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-31T13:07:39.277Z article:section: Politics og:title: Trump’s Shutdown Layoffs Could Be Stuck in Court for Months og:description: Trump officials have been warned internally that the layoffs could be effectively challenged in court, a senior official said og:url: https://time.com/7322826/trumps-shutdown-layoffs-legal-analysis/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0a401383ba21d8c9/6998ca14d32e9384f3cd75da/GettyImages-2237006235.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: US-POLITICS-TRUMP og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Trump’s Shutdown Layoffs Could Be Stuck in Court for Months twitter:description: Trump officials have been warned internally that the layoffs could be effectively challenged in court, a senior official said twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0a401383ba21d8c9/6998ca14d32e9384f3cd75da/GettyImages-2237006235.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Trump’s Promised Shutdown Layoffs Could Be Stuck in Court for Months > Sponsored content. 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Brief is TIME's Washington newsletter, written by senior correspondent Philip Elliott. It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. It reaches 85,000 subscribers with a 37.0% open rate as of August 2026. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters.  by [Brian Bennett](https://time.com/author/brian-bennett/)  ## Brian Bennett Bennett is the senior White House correspondent at TIME. Oct 2, 2025 10:27 PM UTC  President Donald Trump speaks to press in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 25, 2025. President Donald Trump speaks to press in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 25, 2025. Saul Loeb—Getty Images  by [Brian Bennett](https://time.com/author/brian-bennett/)  ## Brian Bennett Bennett is the senior White House correspondent at TIME. Oct 2, 2025 10:27 PM UTC On Thursday morning, the second day of the [partial government shutdown](https://time.com/7322799/government-shutdown-next-week/), Trump wrote in a Truth Social post that he was meeting soon with Russell Vought, his Office of Management and Budget Director, to decide where to start cutting the federal workforce. He said the shutdown has given him an “unprecedented opportunity” to pick and choose which agencies to target for layoffs. One problem with the President’s plan: enacting permanent staffing cuts during a shutdown may be illegal under federal law. If Trump moves forward with layoffs, his action could be mired in court for months. Trump and other Administration officials began last month threatening widespread layoffs of federal workers in the event of a shutdown. On Thursday, Trump seemed to relish the position he found himself in, with Senate Democrats depriving Republicans of the handful of votes they need to keep the government funded. “I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent,” Trump [wrote](https://time.com/7322628/donald-trump-shutdown-vought-project-2025/), giving a nod to Vought’s role as the lead author of Project 2025, a blueprint for remaking the federal government he’s [largely followed](https://time.com/7209901/donald-trump-executive-actions-project-2025/) since taking office but disavowed during his campaign. “I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity.” When White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked what parts of the government Trump was referring to as “Democrat agencies,” she said the White House is looking at “agencies that don’t align with this Administration’s values that we feel are a waste of the taxpayer’s dollars.” The day before, Leavitt had told reporters, “we believe that layoffs are imminent.” Normally during a shutdown, a large portion of the federal workforce is [furloughed](https://time.com/7322462/government-shutdown-trump-confusion/) on a temporary basis until Congress passes a spending bill to reopen the government and give workers back pay. Many agencies have published their plans for how many workers will be temporarily sent home during this shutdown. Agencies slated to furlough the largest percentages of their workers are the Environmental Protection Agency, the Education Department, the Commerce Department, the Labor Department, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Trump also chose to shut down operations of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, an office that had been established by the Inspector General Reform Act of 2008 to improve oversight of waste, fraud and abuse across the federal government. On Thursday afternoon, the agency’s websites—including [oversight.gov](http://oversight.gov)—and links to reports, manuals and training schedules showed a white screen and the message, “Due to a lack of apportionment of funds, this website is currently unavailable.” It’s unclear if the office going dark is temporary or permanent. But Trump, Leavitt, Vought and Vice President J.D. Vance have all said that some federal workers could be permanently fired while the government is unfunded. In a rare appearance during the White House press briefing on Wednesday, Vance framed the potential layoffs, which are also called reductions in force, or RIFs, as necessary to ensure essential services can continue as the shutdown drags on. Hours before the shutdown began, the American Federation of Government Employees and other unions representing hundreds of thousands of federal workers filed a lawsuit in court seeking to block Trump from using the shutdown to fire thousands of federal employees. The lawsuit argues that the Administration doesn’t have legal authority to permanently fire federal employees during a shutdown. The Antideficiency Act, first passed in 1870,forbids the federal government from spending money not appropriated by Congress, and guides much of what the federal government can and can’t do during a shutdown. Reductions in force, on the other hand, are guided by regulations stemming from the Veterans’ Preference Act of 1944 and other statutes, according to the lawsuit, which argues that those statutes are not applicable during a shutdown. Trump officials have been warned internally that permanent firings during the shutdown could be effectively challenged as violations of appropriations law, according to a senior government official. But the Administration’s budget officials aren’t convinced. “It’s called the Constitution,” OMB spokeswoman Rachel Cauley replied in an email when asked what authority the Office of Management and Budget would use to move forward with reductions in force. “Issuing RIFs is an excepted activity to fulfill the President’s constitutional authority to supervise and control the Executive Branch, similar to conducting foreign policy,” Cauley wrote in a statement. The lawsuit, which was filed by the unions in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, is asking the court to to block any efforts by the Administration to issue reductions in force, and to declare that the Administration exceeded its authority in even telling agencies to prepare to fire workers during the shutdown. “The Trump administration must not be allowed to use a shutdown as an excuse for yet another illegal attack on federal workers,” Norm Eisen, executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund and one of the attorneys that filed the lawsuit, said in a statement. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/7322826/trumps-shutdown-layoffs-legal-analysis/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/7322826/trumps-shutdown-layoffs-legal-analysis/"},"headline":"Trump’s Promised Shutdown Layoffs Could Be Stuck in Court for Months","datePublished":"2025-10-02T22:27:13.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-31T13:07:39.277Z","description":"Trump officials have been warned internally that layoffs during a shutdown could be effectively challenged in court","url":"https://time.com/7322826/trumps-shutdown-layoffs-legal-analysis/","keywords":["Trump Administration","uspoliticspolicy"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0a401383ba21d8c9/6998ca14d32e9384f3cd75da/GettyImages-2237006235.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Brian Bennett","jobTitle":"Bennett is the senior White House correspondent at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/brian-bennett/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0a401383ba21d8c9/6998ca14d32e9384f3cd75da/GettyImages-2237006235.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"US-POLITICS-TRUMP","caption":"US-POLITICS-TRUMP","creditText":"Saul Loeb—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/trump-administration/","name":"Trump Administration"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/7322826/trumps-shutdown-layoffs-legal-analysis/","name":"Trump’s Promised Shutdown Layoffs Could Be Stuck in Court for Months"}}]}] ```