A federal judge on Tuesday said the layoffs at the Health and Human Services Department are likely unlawful.
Rhode Island-based US District Judge Melissa Dubose, a Biden appointee, halted the Trump Administration’s plans to downsize the department.
Earlier this year, the Trump Administration fired 10,000 HHS employees.
Several fired employees filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump Administration’s decision to terminate their employment.
19 Democrat state attorneys general also filed a lawsuit challenging the firings.
Judge DuBose said the executive branch does not have the authority to make changes to an agency created by Congress.
AP reported:
A federal judge has ruled that the recent mass layoffs at the U.S. Health and Human Services were likely unlawful and ordered the Trump administration to halt plans to downsize and reorganize the nation’s health workforce.
U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose in Rhode Island granted the preliminary injunction sought by a coalition of attorneys general from 19 states and the District of Columbia in a lawsuit filed in early May.
DuBose said the states had shown “irreparable harm,” from the cuts and were likely to prevail in their claims that the “HHS’s action was both arbitrary and capricious as well as contrary to law.”
“The executive branch does not have the authority to order, organize, or implement wholesale changes to the structure and function of the agencies created by Congress,” DuBose wrote in a 58-page order handed down in U.S. district court of Rhode Island.
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