Second Big DC Appeals Court Win This Week -- Trump Can Reduce Size of Federal Workforce
District court judges do not get to sit as overseers in preventing Executive Branch from "right-sizing" the federal work force to fit its priorities.
The passage below is taken from Judge Amy Berman Jackson’s Order granting a Preliminary Injunction in a case brought to “save” the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) that said — in a nutshell — President Trump could not alter the staffing of the CFPB or alter its operations in any way, using as a baseline for its staffing and operations the status of the agency as it functioned 20 days after Joe Biden left office.
On Friday the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said “overwhelmingly no” and threw out the preliminary injunction — wiped it out completely — clearing the way for the Trump Administration to alter the workings of the CFPB and the shape/size of the workforce needed based on the Administration’s views about how the work of that agency shall get done.
Before getting to the decision by the Appeals Court, it is important for readers to understand just how the decision by a single district court judge in this one particular battle with the Trump Administration reflects the concept of the “Imperial Judiciary.” Here is the text of her Order enjoining the Administration from altering the operations of CFPB:
On April 19, after an evidentiary hearing into allegations that the Trump Administration had violated the Injunction by issuing a “Reduction In Force” notice to 1400 CFPB employees, Judge Jackson issued the following further Order:
Given the preliminary showing made by plaintiffs that they are likely to establish that the defendants have not conducted a particularized assessment that the more than 1400 employees subject to the RIF are unnecessary to the agency's performance of its statutory duties; that, with the RIF, the agency will be unable to operate the Office of Consumer Response as required by statute and the preliminary injunction order; and that the planned RIF is in violation of this Court's order as stayed in part; and in light of the findings embodied in the preliminary injunction order that dismantling the agency would be contrary to law and would cause the plaintiffs irreparable harm, the Court temporarily enjoined the RIF pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65 and its inherent authority to enforce its own orders. This is a non-final, interim order to enable the Court to determine -- on the schedule requested by the parties and based on sworn testimony and contemporaneous records -- whether the RIF is compliant with the existing injunction or not. The order -- to which defendants raised no objection at the hearing -- will remain in place for no more than 14 days, "unless before that time the court, for good cause, extends it for a like period or the adverse party consents to a longer extension." Fed. R. Civ. Pro. 65(b)(2). It is further clarified that the April 18 order prohibits defendants from discontinuing an employee's access to work systems as part of the enjoined RIF, but the provisions in the March preliminary injunction order that enable the agency to make individual employment decisions in the ordinary course of business remain unchanged. SO ORDERED. Signed by Judge Amy Berman Jackson on 4/19/2025.
As is clear from everything above, a Senior Status District Judge in D.C., with a well-established history of anti-Trump animus going back to the President’s first term, basically commandeered the operations of a federal agency because the Administration’s approach to right-sizing the agency and streamlining its functions to those responsibilities mandated by statute was not to her liking. There may be no better single example of progressive judicial activism being waged against the policy changes of the Trump Administration than this particular case — which is a high bar indeed.
