At least 4,000 employees at Commerce, DHS, Justice, HUD, Education, Energy, the EPA and IRS received RIF notices; the IRS alone accounted for some 1,500 of the notices. Image: The Bold Bureau/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffUPDATED: Agencies that issued RIF notices during the shutdown say that they have rescinded the large majority of those notices as required by the law that ended the shutdown, although in some cases a controversy remains over notices that were issued before the shutdown started.
Those statements came as agencies filed the latest status report with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, which had issued a permanent injunction in favor of a group of unions that asserted that a shutdown was not a valid reason for layoffs under reduction in force rules.
Subsequent to that order, the shutdown-ending “continuing resolution” enacted November 12 required agencies to rescind any RIF notices issued between the October 1 start of the shutdown and that date, notify affected employees within five days, and reinstate them with back pay.
In declarations to the court, officials from agencies including HHS, HUD, Energy, EPA and IRS said that they have complied, although adding in some cases that back pay might be delayed due to the need to reconstruct what employees’ working schedules would have been.
Earlier RIFs in dispute
However, the Education Department said it “has not rescinded the RIF notices issued to certain Office for Civil Rights employees in April” or notices to others in that office issued in June, saying “those RIFs do not fall within the scope of the Continuing Resolution.” Those RIFs “nonetheless continue to be paused by this Court’s preliminary injunction,” even though the administration argues that the court order should not have affected notices issued before October 1—an argument the judge earlier rejected.
And while the Commerce Department reported that it had rescinded RIF notices issued during the shutdown, it continued to argue for a restrictive reading of which employees should be covered.
The status reports follow OPM’s instructions to agencies on complying with the law canceling the shutdown RIFS, which it said “applies to all civilian positions—permanent, temporary, term, full-time, part-time, or intermittent—without regard to the source of funding for those positions” and regardless of whether employees were furloughed, kept at work unpaid or kept at work in paid status.
All RIFs barred through Jan 2026
OPM also reminded agencies that the law “provides that no Federal funds may be used to initiate, provide notice of, carry out, or otherwise implement a reduction in force to reduce the number of Federal employees during the period between the date of enactment and January 30, 2026.” That means agencies “must immediately cease issuing RIF notices . . . until January 31, 2026.”
However, that prohibition on RIFs for that period does not extend to voluntary separations or retirements; or actions necessary to comply with a court order in that time. Further, “non-RIF adverse actions” based on performance or conduct related charges may continue, OPM said, as well as the removal of employees who reached the end of time-limited appointments and of employees the agency did not decide to retain on reaching the end of their probationary periods.
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