So many lawsuits have been filed against the Trump administration since January that the Justice Department has struggled to keep up with them. Many of them have focused on the Department of Government Efficiency and its sweeping yet erratic attempts to slash the size of the federal government. While previous cases have focused on blocking or undoing mass layoffs at specific agencies, a new mega-lawsuit filed this week represents the best shot yet at fully undoing all the damage billionaire Elon Musk and DOGE have done once and for all.
A new mega-lawsuit filed this week represents the best shot yet at fully undoing all the damage billionaire Elon Musk and DOGE have done once and for all.
The suit filed Tuesday comes from a broad coalition of labor unions, local governments and nonprofit groups, on behalf of federal workers affected by the White House’s mass layoffs. The question at the heart of the case: whether President Donald Trump and/or members of his administration have the authority to undertake their wide-ranging reshaping of the executive branch. According to the coalition’s lawyers, who include attorneys from the Democracy Forward Foundation and the San Francisco firm Altshuler Berzon, the answer is a resounding “no.”
In their complaint, the plaintiffs focus on an executive order Trump issued on Feb. 11, which commanded all federal agencies to undertake a “critical transformation of the Federal bureaucracy.” The order required every facet of the executive branch to work with DOGE and the Office of Management and Budget to develop “reduction in force” plans to shed thousands of workers. Those staffers who remained after the layoffs would be reorganized and re-allocated to cover whatever remaining functions the administration felt were worthy of the agency continuing.
Trump’s initial order was followed by a memo from OMB and the Office of Personnel Management to coordinate and implement the now-mandatory mass layoffs. The memo gave agencies just two weeks to prepare RIFs and another month to detail the newly reorganized agencies and what functions the newly reduced staffs would be performing. As the plaintiffs note, “it is not possible for any federal agency, let alone all federal agencies, to create [a plan] that both accommodates the specific parameters required by the President, OMB, and OPM and complies with all of the federal agency’s statutory and regulatory requirements in a mere two weeks” or even by the latter deadline.
The complaint alleges that the administration’s haste created an ill-considered dash to cut the government down to size without stopping to consider what functions agencies are legally required to perform under the law. Each of the orders included boilerplate language directing that the work follow federal laws. But the lawsuit argues (as I noted in a March essay) that the “language directing agencies to comply with applicable law in creating these plans was disingenuous,” as there was no way for any agency head to hit the brakes on the layoff project.
Moreover, OMB, OPM and DOGE specifically had the final say on the layoff plans and any new hiring that was to be done in the interim. In the process, the plaintiffs’ attorneys write, those offices have “usurped agency authority, exceeded their own authority, acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner, and ignored procedural requirements.” The resulting mass firings were not just unconstitutional, the plaintiffs argue, but also a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, a law that has been a major thorn in the side of both Trump administrations.
Crucially, the complaint lays out the history of past attempts to reorganize the federal government to highlight the lack of precedent for Trump’s efforts. The Constitution assigned Congress the role of establishing the executive branch’s various departments and agencies, and it has only rarely delegated that power to the president. Even then, that authority has been limited in scope and time frame, and lawmakers have ignored, or outright rejected, numerous proposed reorganizations — including one from the first Trump administration that Congress never acted upon.
In his second administration, Trump hasn’t even pretended to involve Congress in the process, nor has his administration allowed any public debate about the downsizing. Even as federal workers have been subjected to chaotic mass layoffs, pressured buyouts and lengthy administrative leaves ahead of eventual firings, none of the agencies — including DOGE — have released overarching plans for the newly restructured departments.
Accordingly, the plaintiffs are asking the court to declare that Trump has acted unconstitutionally, vacate the various orders mandating mass firings and temporarily restrain the government from implementing any of those orders while the case is ongoing.
In targeting Trump’s lack of authority to reshape the government at will, the lawsuit cuts straight at the “unitary executive” theory of governing that guides Trump’s most ardent crusaders. OMB Director Russ Vought and others believe that the president has carte blanche power in the executive branch, as the Constitution vests all executive authority in him. Under that assumption, they are claiming there can be no independent agencies that don’t follow Trump’s orders or power granted to Cabinet officials that doesn’t flow from the White House.
The plaintiffs have woven a series of disparate threads into a tapestry of illegality.
The plaintiffs in this new case think otherwise: “Congress has not delegated to the President the authority to employ and discharge the subordinate employees of the agencies or to spend appropriated funds on those positions, rather, it delegated those functions exclusively to the heads of federal agencies.” Likewise, they argue, OPM and OMB lack the statutory authority to carry out Trump’s order: “Insofar as neither Article II nor any act of Congress gives the President authority to reorganize federal agencies or order them to engage in massive layoffs of federal employees,” neither agency can “cloak itself in Presidential authority, either.” (The same holds true for DOGE, which the plaintiffs note “has no statutory authority at all.”)
As to the lawsuit’s odds of success, several federal courts have already ruled against the administration’s power to conduct these layoffs on a case-by-case basis. A judge in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, where this case will be heard, previously ordered several agencies to rehire 17,000 probationary workers fired in the purge. The Supreme Court paused that ruling, however, and the case is ongoing.
Given the relatively slow progress in the other cases on this front, it seems unlikely that this will be the one to have a swift resolution, either. The district court may not issue its ruling before Musk steps back from his role at DOGE, as he has told investors he will do soon. Even without him at the helm, it appears DOGE is already turning its sights onto new federal systems to conquer and destroy even as it spectacularly fails to achieve its original cost-cutting goals. And if the case reaches the Supreme Court, as would seem likely, it will be up to Chief Justice John Roberts to decide whether his support for executive authority overrides his belief in the separation of powers.
Until then, though, the wide-ranging relief this lawsuit seeks can still stem DOGE’s worst harms. More importantly, by pulling together an overarching argument against Trump and Musk’s power to shape the government, the plaintiffs have woven a series of disparate threads into a tapestry of illegality. In targeting the very heart of the administration’s dogma, there’s at least a chance that the blatant lawlessness of Trump and Musk’s executive power grab can be shut down for good.
