ED RIFs update: # 4

What more happened in sped world with the US Department of Education reductions in force?

Editor’s note: I have been aggregating news about the US federal government’s reductions in force that occurred in the special education offices of the Department of Education since about 10 October 2025. This is the third in a series of updates that I’ll be posting here on Special Education Today. At the foot of this message there is a catalog of earlier posts on SET about this topic.

Please note: If you know of an announcement, activity, or news story about the reduction in force related to the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services in the US Government, please advise me. See the thread in the SET chat.—JohnL

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Here is what we have learned about the reduction in force at the US Department of Education since the previous update (see later in this post). This is our latest (updated as of 17 October 2025 at ~8:00 PM, so it doesn’t include content posted by major news organizations late Friday).

Please note that these documents are growing too large to mail readily, so this probably the last one in which I’ll use the images associated with the previous updates. Those links will just be textual.

Updates

• On NBC News for 15 October 2025 at 3:01 PM, Fiona Glisson and Ryan J. Reilly published “Judge blocks Trump’s layoffs during shutdown, calling them illegal

  The administration began laying off federal workers Friday”:

federal judge on Wednesday granted a temporary restraining order blocking the Trump administration from laying off federal workers during the government shutdown, which has now stretched to two weeks.

Two unions sued the Trump administration last month ahead of the shutdown after the White House signaled a plan to lay off workers through “reductions in force” (RIFs) at federal agencies. At a hearing on Wednesday, a federal judge in the Northern District of California granted the unions’ motion to issue a temporary restraining order preventing the layoffs, which began on Friday.

“The activities that are being undertaken here are contrary to the laws,” U.S. District Judge Susan Yvonne Illston said. “You can’t do this in a nation of laws.”

• On 15 October 2025 on Government Executive (an online magazine that caters to executives in the US government), Eric Katz published “Judge blocks shutdown layoffs after finding Trump’s actions are likely illegal: The Trump administration is leveraging the shutdown to declare “the laws don’t apply to them anymore,” judge says, adding, ‘they can’t do that.’”

A federal judge on Wednesday blocked the Trump administration from implementing any new or existing layoffs in relation to the shutdown, saying the cuts were likely illegal.

The Trump administration was using the shutdown to determine that “the laws don’t apply to them anymore,” California-based U.S. District Judge Susan Illston said during a hearing, and to pick and choose which parts of the government it wants to permanently eliminate. She called guidance that the Office of Management and Budget issued prior to the funding lapse instructing agencies to make reductions at programs that no longer have authorized funding “completely untrue.”

The Trump administration has “taken advantage of the lapse in government spending, in government functioning, to to assume that that all bets are off, that the laws don’t apply to them anymore,” Illston said, “and that they can impose the structures that they like on a government situation that they don’t like. And I believe that the plaintiffs will demonstrate ultimately that what’s being done here is both illegal and is in excess of authority.”

• On 17 October 2025 about 11:30 AM in a mailing to people in the rolodex for the Council for Exceptional Children Kuna Tavalin provided a summary of recent events. In her Policy Insider message under the headline “This Weeks’ Headlines,” she discussed multiple matters. Here are

  • Mass Layoffs at Office for Special Education Programs Put Special Education in Jeopardy

  • USCCR Report Identifies Civil Rights Threats for Students with Disabilities

  • CEC in the news
    
    There is also a link to “take action” by using CEC’s Web forms to send messages to one’s elected officials. There is similar content available on the CEC Web site, Special Education TODAY¹

• On K-12 Dive for 15 October 2025, Kara Arundel reported “What to know about the Education Department’s latest round of RIFs: Education experts warn of potential disruptions to the oversight of civil rights protections and funding reimbursements due to severe staff reductions.” Here is the lede for her report, but I encourage readers of SET to go to the original and read it, as she included some good reporting under the heading “What’s the impact for K-12 schools”:

Even as more than 400 U.S. Department of Education staffers received reduction-in-force notices on Friday, many of these laid-off employees remained in the dark about their employment status. That’s because they couldn’t access their work emails to view the RIF notices with the federal government shut down due to the congressional impasse over funding.

The RIFs impacted Education Department offices that oversee civil rights, special education, student achievement supports, budgeting services, school safety, postsecondary education and more, according to the American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing more than 2,700 Education Department employees, in an Oct. 12 email.

• On Government Executive for 17 October at 4:34 PM, Eric Katz reported about US ED workers being notified that their terminations had been stayed as a part of his article “Trump admin vows to follow court order on layoffs, but some cuts may still be imminent: The Interior Department revealed new details on its planned reductions.” Here is the relevant snippet

Education Department: Education laid off 465 employees last week and said on Friday it sent sent [sic] notices to every impacted worker to let them know their termination was stayed as a result of the TRO.

Please let me know if you have additional content that ought to be represented here. See also the thread in the SET chat. I know of some other sources that are not represented in the foregoing paragraphs, but I would appreciate help from the community in locating more news.²

Previous coverage

Here are links to posts published earlier on SET that cover aspects of this story.

• On 15 October 2025 at 2:35 PM SET published:

• On 14 October 2025 at 7:30 PM SET published:

• On 13 October 2025 at 2:00 PM SET published:

• On 12 October 2025 at 5:00 AM SET. published:

Footnote

1. Yes, CEC uses the same name that we use, distinguished by the typography. SET should not be confused with that product published by the Council for Exceptional Children. SET predated CEC’s publication by decades. Despite my appreciation for CEC, this product is not designed to promote that organization nor should the views expressed here be considered to represent the views or policies of that organization.

2. The National Association of State Directors of Special Education published a link apparently aimed at the K-12 Dive story listed earlier in this message; the link was malformed, so it “went 400.” The Council for Administrators of Special Education published a document sometime (the public data are note dated). The document is on Google’s documents server, so I won’t visit it or publicize it here in recognition of the data-harvesting policies and practices of that company. Readers who are willing to sacrifice their privacy may visit the link to CASE and locate the document.