Nineteen State Attorneys General Sue Administration Over HHS Layoffs
Nineteen state attorneys general have banded together to sue the Trump administration over the recently announced layoffs of some 10,000 federal workers employed by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The state AGs are going into federal court to reverse the layoffs.
As Government Executive’s Eric Katz wrote on May 5, “The laying off of 10,000 Health and Human Services Department employees was unlawful and should be reversed, 19 states bringing a lawsuit against the Trump administration said in court filings Monday, adding the agency had “no constitutional or statutory authority” to carry out the staffing cuts. The states have borne the direct impact of the reductions due to office closures and the loss of expertise resulting from the reductions in force, the Democratic state attorneys general said in seeking to establish their standing in the case. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. oversaw the RIFs in April and announced it would shed another 10,000 employees through attrition, leading to a 25-percent overall reduction in HHS’ workforce.”
Indeed, Katz wrote, “The cuts had sweeping impacts and touched employees working on infectious diseases, cancer research, the opioid epidemic and significantly more. HHS went from 28 offices down to 15 and from 10 regional offices to five. HHS has “no authority to conduct a reorganization, nor can they use layoffs to diminish agency capacity below statutory requirements,” the states said in their complaint to the U.S. District Court for Rhode Island, where it was assigned to Judge Melissa DuBose, a President Biden appointee. The states argued that HHS was breaking federal law by contravening Congress’ directives on spending money and statutory programs. They added that Kennedy and the Trump administration’s actions were ‘arbitrary and capricious,’ in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act, and highlighted the secretary’s admission that at least 20% of the layoffs occurred by mistake.”
Their complaint, filed in the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island on Monday, stated in the first paragraph of its introduction, that “The core mission of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS, or the Department) is to enhance the health and well-being of all Americans by providing for effective health and human services and by fostering sound, sustained advances in the sciences underlying medicine, public health, and social services. HHS, its many agencies, divisions, offices, and programs are the manifestation of Congress’s interest in protecting and improving the well-being of our citizens. Congress has passed dozens of laws for HHS to enforce and authorized HHS to spend $2.5 trillion in Fiscal Year 2024 alone because, in Congress’s judgment, the work of the Department is that critical. Over the course of a few days in late March and early April, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (Secretary Kennedy) dismantled the Department in violation of Congress’s instructions, the U.S. Constitution, and the many statutes that govern the Department’s programs and appropriate funds for it to administer.”
What’s more, later in the introduction, the state attorneys general wrote that “The layoffs affected every type of HHS worker, yet the layoffs did not fall evenly across the Department and in fact targeted disfavored work and programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), and the Administration for Community Living (ACL). Ultimately, Defendants terminated 10,000 full-time employees, collapsed twenty-eight agencies into fifteen (shuffling and splitting several subagencies), created three new agencies, and closed half of HHS’s ten regional offices. 5. Abandoning the Department’s core functions was not an unintended side effect, but rather, the intended result of the March 27 Directive.”
Indeed, they wrote, “Incapacitating one of the most sophisticated departments in the federal government implicates hundreds of statutes, regulations, and programs,” they wrote. 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. He agreed that he forewent a careful line-by-line review of who should be fired because “it takes too long” and he would lose “political momentum”—making plain that the process used to determine layoffs was arbitrary and capricious. The March 27 Directive came after scores of probationary employees were laid off and many employees took a buy-out offer. None of these layoffs were necessary to accommodate a funding shortfall—Congress’s appropriations have remained steady, or in many cases, grown in recent years. All told, 20,000 full-time employees—almost twenty-five percent of HHS headcount—would be terminated in a few months to save, by Defendants’ own estimate, less than one percent of HHS expenditures.”
Per that, New York Attorney General Letitia James, one of the 19 AGs participating in the lawsuit, stated that “This administration is not streamlining the federal government; they are sabotaging it and all of us. When you fire the scientists who research infectious diseases, silence the doctors who care for pregnant patients, and shut down the programs that help firefighters and miners breathe or children thrive, you are not making America healthy — you are putting countless lives at risk.”
Per that, Healthcare Dive’s Susanna Vogel wrote on Tuesday that “The attorneys general argue the Trump administration intended to sow chaos and decimate the agency, citing a leaked budget document from April that outlined further planned cuts to the agency. The final budget proposal, released Friday, suggests cutting HHS’ discretionary budget for next year by 26 percent. Much of the cuts are targeted at the National Institutes of Health and the CDC. Kennedy is scheduled to appear at a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions subcommittee hearing on May 14,” Vogel noted. Although the hearing is focused on the HHS’ budget for 2026, senators are likely to question him about the restructuring. Kennedy dodged a previous request to testify before the Senate HELP [Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions] committee in April.”
Meanwhile, in a report on Monday, CBS News’s Joe Walsh wrote that “The suit also takes aim at Kennedy's views, citing his vaccine skepticism and "history of advocating for the evisceration of the Department's statutorily mandated work promoting public health." It also pointed to Kennedy's acknowledgement that 20% of job cuts at the HHS may need to be reversed due to ‘mistakes.’ An HHS spokesperson said in response to the lawsuit, ‘HHS remains confident that the process will withstand legal scrutiny. We are following the law, period. Nothing has been rushed and multiple rounds of discussions between divisions and HHS occurred before the announcement. Every step taken has been deliberate, collaborative, and consistent with federal personnel policy and civil service protections,’ the spokesperson said.”
Walsh added that “The spokesperson also defended changes to the agency, saying they ‘are designed to strengthen the agency's capacity to serve the American public, not weaken it.’” And he added that “Monday's suit is the latest legal action against the Trump administration's cost-cutting drive. Almost two dozen states sued HHS last month for cutting public health grants, and labor unions have sued the government over cuts to other agencies.”
The 19 states whose attorneys general are participating in the lawsuit are Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin and Washington, D.C.
The full text of the original complaint can be found here.
