10/07/2026
A settlement agreement has been announced in a case brought by labor unions that challenged the Trump-Vance administration’s unlawful mass firing of federal employees during the 2025 government shutdown. During that shutdown, Judge Susan Illston of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California issued a preliminary injunction preventing the administration from issuing or enforcing reduction-in-force (RIF) notices at federal agencies where the unions represent employees. The court also issued subsequent injunctive relief stopping the federal government from firing employees in violation of the federal legislation that ended the shutdown and requiring reinstatement of any employees who had been separated.
The settlement agreement, announced today in a court filing by the coalition of unions and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), will pause the current litigation and require federal agencies to be informed that the memo and guidance directing federal agencies to fire employees during federal government shutdowns has been abandoned, to modify their own agency shutdown plans to remove any authorization of RIFs, and to give 30 days’ notice if they intend to modify those plans to allow RIFs during a future government shutdown.
The case was brought by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) on September 30, 2025 and the case later expanded to include employees represented by the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE), the National Association of Government Employees (NAGE), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE). The unions are represented by Altshuler Berzon LLP, Democracy Forward, and Democracy Defenders Fund.
To read more, visit nffe.org.
