The Interior Department has paused its plans to lay off more than 2,000 employees during the government shutdown, a top agency official wrote in a court filing late Tuesday.
The filing was the clearest indication yet that the Interior Department planned to comply with a federal judge’s order blocking the Trump administration from conducting mass layoffs during the shutdown. Trump officials previously have suggested a willingness to ignore court orders to fulfill President Trump’s agenda.
The Interior Department is a sprawling agency that includes the National Park Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service and numerous other bureaus. One of its main responsibilities is oversight of national parks, which are suffering damage and illegal activity during the shutdown because of low staffing levels.
Rachel Borra, the Interior Department’s chief human capital officer, wrote in the court filing that the agency had no “imminent” plans to pursue the layoffs, known in government terminology as reductions in force, or RIFs. “Interior has no plans to, and therefore will not be issuing RIF notices to any employees during this lapse in appropriations,” Ms. Borra wrote.
Judge Susan Illston, of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, issued the order last month blocking the layoffs, siding with unions that had argued that the firings were illegal. She expanded the order two days later to spare a wider array of civil servants from being dismissed while many are furloughed or working without pay.
Judge Illston, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, delivered a sharp rebuke of the Trump administration, saying it had “taken advantage of the lapse in government spending and government functioning to assume that all bets are off, that the laws don’t apply to them anymore.”
It was not immediately clear if other government agencies would follow the Interior Department’s lead and also halt job reductions. The White House Office of Management and Budget did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Interior Department’s layoff plans, detailed in earlier court filings, had called for eliminating 770 positions in the office of the secretary, 474 positions at the Bureau of Land Management, 335 positions at the U.S. Geological Survey, 272 roles at the National Park Service and 143 roles at the Fish and Wildlife Service.
Environmental groups applauded the latest court filing.
“These proposed layoffs have never been about fiscal responsibility — they are calculated cruelty against the workers who keep our shared national public lands preserved and welcoming,” Athan Manuel, director of the Sierra Club’s Lands Protection Program, said in a statement.
Bobby McEnaney, director of land conservation at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in an email that “standing down is the right call — and the only legal one.”
Maxine Joselow covers climate change and the environment for The Times from Washington.
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