President Donald Trump, left, speaks as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. listens during a Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission Event in the East Room of the White House, Thursday, May 22, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin).
A federal court in Rhode Island on Tuesday ordered the Trump administration to stop a series of planned layoffs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
In a 58-page memorandum and order, U.S. District Judge Melissa R. DuBose, a Joe Biden appointee, granted a motion for a preliminary injunction which bars the government from “taking any actions to implement or enforce” and firings or planned restructuring.
The judge took the government to task for trying to avoid spending money already allocated by Congress in spending legislation.
“In the case at hand, Congress directed HHS to maintain specific initiatives with the support of the Congressional appropriations pursuant to the applicable statutes,” the order reads. “HHS cannot decide for itself whether it has exceeded its statutory authority because there are Congressional statutes in place to serve as guardrails to the Agency”s actions.”
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The court later rubbished those efforts using exceedingly strong language.
“[T]his Court concludes that the Defendants usurped Congressional power to manage the public health appropriations at stake and that the States are likely to succeed on their ‘contrary to law’ claims,” the order goes on.
DuBose, in ruling for the plaintiffs, all but summarily rejected the government’s litany of arguments and defenses – and denied the government a pre-requested stay of the injunction.
The plaintiffs, led by New York state, welcomed the ruling.
“HHS is the backbone of our nation’s public health and social safety net — from cancer screenings and maternal health to early childhood education and domestic violence prevention,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a press release. “Today’s order guarantees these programs and services will remain accessible and halts the administration’s attempt to sabotage our nation’s health care system. My office will continue fighting to stop this unlawful dismantling and defend the essential services that protect our most vulnerable communities.”
On March 27, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that 10,000 employees would be fired and dozens of sub-agencies would be shuttered in service of the Trump administration’s so-called “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) campaign.
Relevant here, HHS began “terminating the people necessary for it to meet its own mandates, and paralyzing it by means of a confusing reorganization,” the plaintiffs alleged in their 101-page complaint.
“Abandoning the Department’s core functions was not an unintended side effect, but rather, the intended result of the March 27 Directive,” the original petition reads. “Incapacitating one of the most sophisticated departments in the federal government implicates hundreds of statutes, regulations, and programs. But Secretary Kennedy refused to undertake this restructuring legally or carefully. In fact, Secretary Kennedy has since said that he knew that possibly twenty percent of the reductions in force (RIFs) were going to be ‘mistakes’ even before the RIFs were executed.”
The judge agreed with the state plaintiffs about the negative effect the layoffs had on several departments and sub-agencies within HHS.
“[T]his Court finds the March 27 Communiqué and RIF of nearly 10,000 HHS employees has launched several HHS programs into a rapid freefall away from their statutory obligations, thereby irreparably harming the States,” the order reads.
The order spends considerable time detailing a list of hardships the plaintiffs have had to endure due to lack of resources within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the affiliated National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).
“Critical public health services have been interrupted, databases taken offline, status of grants thrown into chaos, technical assistance services gone, and training and consultation services curtailed,” the order goes on. “These are not unsubstantiated fears. Further, none of these harms can be compensated by money damages. The Court finds that the States have established irreparable harm stemming from the Communiqué.”
The government, for its part, tried to defend against the lawsuit by arguing the plaintiffs waited too long to sue for relief.
The court wholly rejected that argument in a footnote:
The Court can dismiss the delay in filing argument right off the bat. The Communiqué was issued on March 27, the RIFs occurred on April 1, and the States filed this case on May 5, 2025. It was completely reasonable for the States to wait until the harms, described in the nearly 70 declarations, were realized. The Court disagrees with the Defendants’ statement that “the delay further undermines their claims that they are suffering irreparable harm.”
The Trump administration also complained the states were trying to launch a so-called “programmatic attack” on the political goals and prerogatives of the newly-led HHS. This kind of complaint argues, essentially, that a plaintiff is attacking how the government evolves as it carries out its business.
Again, the judge rejected the government’s defense.
“This Court is not persuaded by the Defendants’ argument that the States are launching a programmatic challenge because the States are indeed challenging the discrete March 27 Communiqué,” the order goes on. “It is this action that ushered in sweeping terminations and administrative leaves that essentially eviscerated many of the public health programs on which the States rely. Contrary to the Defendants’ assertions, the record does not indicate that the States are seeking ‘wholesale improvement’ of a program.”
Notably, Dubose found Kennedy’s termination effort wholly unlawful.
From the order, at length:
Here, the Court finds that the Communiqué contravenes congressional directives and statutory law. The States have presented copious clear examples in which Congress has appropriated funds to the federal programs and outlined how those funds are to be used. The Defendants, on the other hand, have yet to proffer any evidence demonstrating that the planned terminations would not decimate the Congressionally created sub-agencies or inhibit them from fulfilling their mandates. The catastrophic effects documented by the States illuminate that reality. In the Court’s view, the States have substantiated that HHS is already unable to fulfill many of its statutory functions in light of the Communiqué. Given that the Communiqué is for all intent and purpose dismantling critical, statutorily mandated functions of the Agency, this Court finds that it is contrary to law.
“The Defendants’ efforts to portray the Communiqué and its whiplash as a matter of agency discretion despite the snub of Congressional mandates is without merit,” the order continues. “An examination of the relevant statutes supports the conclusion that Congress never meant to confer HHS the power to self-destruct. The Defendants here have failed to submit any evidence that HHS can meet its Congressional orders without applying the federal appropriations and employing the essential staff and experts who run its programs.”
