Challenges to Trump’s Federal Workforce Upheaval Hit Legal Snags

Opponents of the Trump administration’s dramatic efforts to downsize the federal workforce are encountering procedural hurdles in federal court as judges scrutinize where emergency relief is warranted while the cases proceed.

Critical threshold questions arising in the early stages of labor-related disputes filed by federal-sector employee unions—like whether litigation is ripe for judicial review and whether public sector unions have directly been or will be harmed by the White House’s actions—have prevented judges from granting immediate relief within the past weeks. Judges echoed concerns about the upheaval President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders have caused but concluded that certain cases ...