The Interior Department plans to lay off more than 2,000 employees, including hundreds of National Parks Service (NPS) workers, according to a Monday court filing.
The declaration, filed in the Northern District of California’s San Francisco Division, says the department intends to lay off 2,050 workers across 89 units.
Rachel Borra, the agency’s chief human capital officer as of Sept. 29, said the layoff plans “predated” the government shutdown and are not related to guidance on layoffs issued by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Office of Personnel Management prior to the shutdown starting on Oct. 1.
According to the court filing, Interior plans to lay off more than 470 employees from the Bureau of Labor Management and more than 140 from the Fish and Wildlife Service. It also plans to let go more than 270 employees at NPS, including more than 180 from parks in the Southeast, Northeast and Pacific West regions.
During the shutdown, most national parks have remained open, albeit with limited staffing. For instance, as of Thursday, Yosemite National Park in California reported that NPS visitor centers, ranger-led programs and most nonessential maintenance are paused.
On Wednesday, the court granted a host of federal employee unions a temporary restraining order in their efforts to halt OMB-directed layoffs. In the order, Judge Susan Illston said the Trump administration is attempting “to fire line-level civilian employees during a government shutdown as a way to punish the opposing political party.”
Illston, appointed by former President Clinton, added that “the harms suffered by federal employees affected by [layoffs] are having drastic and imminent public consequences.”
The Hill has reached out to the American Federation of Government Employees and AFL-CIO, two of the unions that filed the initial lawsuit, for comment on Interior’s plans. AFL-CIO directed The Hill to three other unions: the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; Service Employees International Union; and National Federation of Federal Employees.
On Oct. 10, the White House said federal worker layoffs had begun. A filing from the Department of Justice that same day said that over 4,100 federal employees had already been let go.
Last Tuesday, OMB Director Russ Vought told Andrew Kolvet on “The Charlie Kirk Show” that it is likely that over 10,000 federal workers will be laid off during the shutdown.
Source: The Hill - News
