Federal Job Cuts: How Firings Could Happen for Thousands of Workers

Thousands of federal workers are on the lookout for notices of job cuts.

The Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s administration can proceed with its reduction-in-force, or RIF, plans across federal agencies after federal judges temporarily blocked the terminations in May. The court opted to “express no view on the legality” of any RIF or reorganization plan.

While agencies crafted plans in March and April to slash thousands of roles, they could change completely with agencies choosing to continue offering workers more options, such as buyouts and deferred resignations.

In the months since RIF plans were paused, that’s already been happening. For example, the Department of Labor offered employees the option to voluntarily resign while getting paid through the fall.

“Through voluntary incentive programs and natural attrition, the Department of Labor has reached a 20% reduction across our federal workforce, achieving our goal to promote efficiency and eliminate redundancies, while retaining critical positions that fulfill our core mission of putting American workers first,” a DOL spokesperson told BI.

Others, like the Internal Revenue Service, offered a lump-sum buyout offer and a voluntary early retirement application. If enough people choose to voluntarily leave their jobs, federal agencies could opt to scale down their initial RIF plans, which are more like a straightforward mass layoff.

Alan Lescht, an employment attorney at Alan Lescht & Associates specializing in federal workers, said that the SCOTUS ruling means agencies can move forward with their original RIF plans as soon as they want.

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“There’s been a lot of people on administrative leave pending whether these RIFs would go forward or not,” Lescht said, referring to federal workers who were put on leave as their employment status remained up in the air. It’s now up to the administration to decide if those terminations will proceed. “If they’re going to go forward, then they’ll send out notices that you’re hereby removed and you have 30 days to file an appeal at the Merit System Protection Board.”

The workforce reductions were initially spearheaded by Elon Musk in January, who was the unofficial leader of the administration’s DOGE office. Musk and Trump have both said that the firings — which targeted probationary workers early in their federal government tenures — were aimed at boosting efficiency.

They included, among others, 1,300 employees at the Department of Education, 10,000 employees at the Department of Health and Human Services, and 2,700 at the Small Business Administration. Federal judges ordered some agencies to reinstate some of those affected employees, and they could now once again be subject to terminations after the Supreme Court ruling. Musk has since stepped down, and due to the series of legal challenges, threats of RIFs have temporarily diminished.

The high court’s latest decision likely puts more workers — not just probationary — back at risk of termination.

Federal agencies could fire en masse or offer options like buyouts

Prior to the Supreme Court’s decision, some agencies said their workforce reduction goals were largely being accomplished by deferred resignation programs and early retirements. The Department of Veterans Affairs announced on Monday that it’s on pace to reduce total staff by nearly 30,000 employees by the end of fiscal year 2025 and that a wide-scale RIF is no longer necessary.

“While VA had been considering a department-wide RIF to reduce staff levels by up to 15%, employee reductions through the federal hiring freeze, deferred resignations, retirements and normal attrition have eliminated the need for that RIF,” the agency said in a press release.

That doesn’t mean federal workers are all in the clear. “If agencies were going to retract the RIFs, I think they would’ve done it. And we might see fewer RIFs going forward than have been previously announced. But I do not anticipate they’re going to withdraw the ones that are already in progress,” Erik Snyder, counsel at Gilbert Employment Law who specializes in federal employment law, said.

The State Department, meanwhile, wrote in a post on X following the Supreme Court’s ruling that it will “continue to move forward with our historic reorganization plan at the State Department, as announced earlier this year.” Its initial plan called for a 15% reduction in force.

Lescht said that there may be more legal hurdles to come as RIFs proceed; he suspects that there will be other lawsuits filed by public service unions challenging the proceedings. Union officials noted that the SCOTUS order only stays an injunction in the case they weighed in on, meaning other RIF cases might still move forward; they also noted that since the decision does not address whether the restructuring is illegal, there could be continued litigation on the RIFs.

“My firm, in particular, we represent federal employees. That’s most of what we do,” Snyder said. “We are preparing or have prepared class action lawsuits to challenge these RIFs.”

Madison Hoff contributed reporting to this article.

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