PROVIDENCE, R.I. – A federal judge has deemed the recent mass layoffs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services likely illegal and has directed the Trump administration to pause its plans to streamline and reorganize the country’s health workforce.
U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose provided the preliminary injunction requested by a coalition of attorneys general from 19 states and the District of Columbia in a lawsuit filed at the beginning of May.
DuBose stated that the states had demonstrated “irreparable harm” due to the layoffs and were likely to succeed in their assertions that “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 in Providence.
Her order blocks the Trump administration from finalizing layoffs announced in March or issuing any further firings. HHS is directed to file a status report by July 11.
The ruling applies to terminated employees in four different divisions of HHS: the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the Center for Tobacco Products within the Food and Drug Administration; the Office of Head Start within the Administration for Children and Families and employees of regional offices who work on Head Start matters; and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. eliminated more than 10,000 employees in late March and consolidated 28 agencies to 15. Since then, agencies including the CDC have repeatedly rescinded layoffs affecting hundreds of employees, including in branches that monitor HIV, hepatitis and other diseases.
The attorneys general argued that the massive restructuring was arbitrary and outside of the scope of the agency’s authority. The lawsuit also says the action decimated essential programs and pushed burdensome costs onto states.
“The intended effect … was the wholesale elimination of many HHS programs that are critical to public health and safety,” the lawsuit argued.
The cuts are part of a federal “Make America Healthy Again” directive to streamline costly agencies and reduce redundancies. Kennedy told senators at a May 14 hearing that there is “so much chaos and disorganization” at HHS.
But the restructuring had eliminated key teams that regulate food safety and drugs, as well as support a wide range of programs for tobacco, HIV prevention and maternal and infant health. Kennedy has since said that because of mistakes, 20% of people fired might be reinstated.
The states who joined the lawsuit have Democratic governors, and many of the same states — plus a few others — also sued the Trump administration over $11 billion in cuts to public health funding. A preliminary injunction was granted in that case in mid-May.
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