The Trump administration’s latest round of federal employee layoffs are postponed indefinitely after a recent court ruling today.

A federal judge in San Francisco granted a preliminary injunction on Tuesday that will stop the Trump administration from proceeding with widespread reductions-in-force.

This protects about 4,000 federal employees and also prevents the issuing of new RIF notices, while the case proceeds through the court.

U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston said her preliminary injunction will block any more RIF notices or implementing RIF notices that have been issued “because of the shutdown.” The preliminary injunction, however, will not halt RIF notices that were sent before the shutdown.

Illston said in a hearing Tuesday at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California that the driving force of these RIFs has been “political retribution.”

President Donald Trump has repeatedly said that his administration is targeting “Democrat agencies” through layoffs during the government shutdown. The Office of Management and Budget has also directed agencies, during the shutdown, to consider layoffs in programs that lack alternative funding sources and that don’t align with the president’s priorities.

Illston’s preliminary injunction follows a temporary restraining order she placed earlier in October which blocked the Trump administration from carrying out its shutdown RIFs for two weeks.

Agencies typically don’t carry out layoffs during a shutdown, but the Office of Personnel Management updated its guidance, exempting agency RIF procedures from that protocol.

Illston said OMB and OPM’s actions were also “likely unlawful,” after telling agencies that statutory mandates that carry out certain programs no longer apply during a government shutdown.

Justice Department attorneys representing the Trump administration, up until now, declined to defend the merits of the shutdown RIFs, and instead sought to get the case thrown out for procedural reasons.

However, DOJ Senior Counsel Michael Velchik said there are “more reasons during a lapse in appropriations to engage in RIFs, not fewer.”

“If you don’t have money coming in, you should be looking for ways to cut costs. This is true for a household, for a firm or for the government,” he said.

Velchik said furloughed employees are “incurring future obligations to the federal taxpayer, who will then have to pay back wages for these individuals who are not working.”

“It’s not just that they’re not working on their normal duties, but they’re working on duties that agency leaders have determined are no longer advancing presidential priorities,” Velchik said.

“Morally, this is the right thing to do, and it’s the democratic thing to do,” he said. “I mean, the president was elected on this specific platform. When the American people selected someone known, above all else, for his eloquence in communicating to employees that you’re fired, this is what they voted for.”

OMB Director Russ Vought stated earlier this month that Congress gave the Trump administration approval to pursue layoffs once lawmakers failed to pass a stopgap spending bill before October 1st.

“Congress is saying we’re not going to fund these programs by not passing the Republican continuing resolution. So if there’s no funding for these programs, what would you have us do? Is it not to make an assumption that you don’t intend to fund these in the future?” Vought said.

The preliminary injunction currently covers eight plaintiff unions. The case originally protected members of the American Federation of Government Employees and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees from layoffs.

Plaintiffs have no present plans to add more unions to the lawsuit. The current unions sought this to protect against the Interior Departments statement that it was planning to “imminently” send RIF notices to over 2,000 of its employees.

Interior officials said the RIFs are not related to the ongoing government shutdown, but happened to coincide with it, despite the departments ability to have sent RIF notices since July, when the Supreme Court gave the Trump administration broad authority to proceed with layoffs.

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