A group of federal workers who were laid off during the government shutdown are accusing the Trump administration of violating the law by failing to rehire them once federal agencies reopened.
Thirty-five former employees of the General Services Administration argue that they should have been reinstated under the spending law that ended the shutdown, which included a provision that reversed any layoff that occurred during the lapse in federal spending that began on Oct. 1.
The provision was one of the major concessions that a small clutch of Democrats extracted from Republicans this month in exchange for agreeing to end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. But while the Trump administration reinstated thousands of laid-off federal workers within five days of the government’s reopening, it did not include those whose termination had been set in motion before the shutdown began.
That included about 200 people at the G.S.A., who the administration argues are not covered by the statute because they were notified before the government shut down that they would be laid off.
“Congress was specific in the bill it wrote that it was concerned with RIF notices issued during the shutdown, not RIFs that were noticed before Oct. 1, 2025,” McLaurine Pinover, a spokeswoman for the Office of Personnel Management, said in a statement, referring to layoffs known in federal parlance as reductions in force. “RIFs that were noticed before the shutdown but happened to have a separation date that fell later were not ‘implemented or executed’ during the shutdown, but rather before.”
Senator Tim Kaine, the Virginia Democrat who led negotiations on the federal worker protections in the spending package and cited the measure’s inclusion as a reason he broke with his party to vote with Republicans to reopen the government, said in a statement that the administration’s interpretation ran squarely counter to the law.
“The RIF provision in the government funding deal is clear: Any RIF that was initiated on or since Oct. 1 is null and void, and any RIF not completed by Oct. 1 is halted,” Mr. Kaine said. “Congress’s intent to protect federal workers from baseless firings is obvious — a fact that will strengthen federal workers’ cases in any litigation to hold the administration to account for attempts to disregard the law.”
The law states that any reduction in force “proposed, noticed, initiated, executed, implemented or otherwise taken” during the shutdown “shall have no force or effect.”
Nick Bednar, an administrative law expert at the University of Minnesota, said that language makes it clear that Congress meant for the law to cover any federal worker at any stage in the RIF process — not just those who were first told they were being laid off after the shutdown began.
“If Congress only wanted to cover RIFs where the notice was issued after Oct. 1, it did not need to include the words ‘executed’ or ‘implementation,’” he said. “Yet it did.”
The dispute is the latest in a long line of Trump administration personnel actions this year that will ultimately have to be sorted out in the courts. In this case, the 35 affected G.S.A. employees have appealed their terminations at the Merit Systems Protection Board, an administrative body that reviews these situations, said one of their lawyers, Erik D. Snyder of Gilbert Employment Law.
The administration’s interpretation of the law confirms the fears raised by Democrats during the shutdown that negotiating with Republicans would be useless because the Trump administration had shown it was willing to go around congressional dictates set out in legislation.
Even though the number of federal workers affected by the administration’s selective reading of the law is small compared with the thousands of workers who have been reinstated since the government reopened, the implications are significant.
For Tony Hulsey, one of the 35 workers who are appealing their terminations, it means about $30,000 in lost wages — at least 16 weeks of pay he and other affected G.S.A. workers they say they are owed under the law.
The shutdown layoffs are part of the Trump administration’s efforts over the past year to shrink the size of the federal work force. Since Mr. Trump returned to the Oval Office, the government employees have been on notice that they could be fired at any point.
In total, about 17,000 workers have been laid off. Another 7,000 probationary employees were fired, and about 165,000 resigned under pressure or retired early, according to the Office of Personnel Management, the government’s human resources arm.
Most of the personnel actions are facing legal challenges, and the reduction in force layoffs have moved in fits and starts as a result, leaving thousands of workers in employment limbo and wondering when they might see their last paycheck.
“I’ll be blunt,” Mr. Hulsey said. “It’s been hell.”
In late February and early March, the administration gave certain employees, including Mr. Hulsey, a heads-up that they would be part of a future layoff. By early March, Mr. Hulsey was placed on paid leave and told his last day with the government would be June 7.
Mr. Hulsey said June 7 came and went, and he continued to be paid while on leave for a few more months, never knowing when he would stop getting a paycheck.
Then, on Sept. 24, Mr. Hulsey received notification that he would be separated from the government on Oct. 6.
Catie Edmondson contributed reporting.
Eileen Sullivan is a Times reporter covering the changes to the federal work force under the Trump administration.
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