Update on federal layoffs: impact and a court order

Since last week, there have been some additional insights and responses to the administration’s firing of thousands of federal workers earlier this month.

• Reminder: Those layoffs included over 1,000 Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) staff, including many from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). See last week’s summary for a full refresher.

More details on the impact:

• CDC’s National Center on Injury Prevention and Control has about 250 people left out of roughly 700 it had at the start of the year. The overdose division largely survived the firings this month, but it likely will be unable to function due to the other cuts across the center. For example, it is unclear how overdose data will be collected without the completely terminated operations team and published without the center’s science office, which was responsible for validating the data.
• CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics was also a target of layoffs, with about 100 of its staff fired. That includes staff responsible for tracking health care provider and hospitalization data, leaders of the division on vital statistics, and all staff responsible for liaising with Congress, tracking policies, and ensuring funding is sustained. It also included people working on research and planning/executing surveys on health, nutrition, and health care. There is confusion about who has been called back and who remains laid off.
• At the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), approximately 100 employees were laid off, including staff that supported children’s emergency medical services, infant development, loans and scholarships for dentistry and nursing, regional offices, and oversight of agency data.
• Staff members at other large departments within HHS, including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), were spared from these layoffs.

A pause from the courts:

• A federal judge put the HHS firings on hold, issuing a temporary restraining order pending further arguments in the case. The order blocks the administration from “taking any action” to issue reduction-in-force notices to workers represented by the American Federation of Government Employees, the country’s largest federal employees’ union.
• The judge ruled that the reduction-in-force plan appears to be unlawful and politically motivated. She ruled that officials are not following legal requirements for conducting layoffs and pointed to public comments by President Trump, Vice President Vance, and Budget Director Vought, saying they reveal an apparent unlawful political bias.
• What’s coming: For the workers, there is no immediate impact. They were already on furlough because of the government shutdown, and the layoffs were not to take effect until Dec. 8. The administration is all but certain to challenge the ruling. The court is expected to hold a hearing in the next two weeks.

But: Ahead of the judge’s ruling, Vought was pledging to fire more federal workers, estimating that more than 10,000 federal workers would ultimately lose their jobs as a result of the shutdown.