the solidarity docket
Weekly Dispatch from Suzanne Summerlin, General Counsel
December 4, 2025
Dear Colleagues and Friends,
We return from the holiday weekend to a flood of developments across the federal workforce: legal, structural, and institutional. All unfolding in real time. And although the historic shutdown finally ended last month, stability remains out of reach: the next funding deadline arrives in just eight weeks, on January 30, 2026.
Here is what federal workers and our volunteer attorneys need to know this week.
1. Breaking: AFSA & AFGE Sue State Department for Violating Shutdown Law
On December 3, AFSA and AFGE filed a major lawsuit after the State Department confirmed it will proceed with mass layoffs despite Congress explicitly prohibiting those terminations in the shutdown-ending continuing resolution.
Congress required agencies to rescind all RIFs issued during the shutdown. The State Department:
is refusing to reinstate employees covered by the rescission mandate, and
is moving ahead with additional layoffs — even though the CR bars further RIFs during its duration, and even though the shutdown-era preliminary injunction forbids these actions in bargaining-unit populations.
This is now one of the most important federal workforce cases in the country, with nationwide implications for agency compliance, statutory limits, and court authority.
2. Mass Attrition Accelerates: 317,000 Federal Employees Have Left in 2025
Federal News Network reports that 317,000 federal employees have exited the civil service this year, surpassing OPM’s own projections and raising alarms about operational viability.
Key points:
Attrition is widespread and structural.
Losses are deepest in mission-critical agencies.
Workforce collapse is emerging as a primary governance risk.
For broader context, Brookings asks the central question: How many people can the federal government lose before it crashes?
The paper warns that the federal government is approaching a structural tipping point. While there is no single “crash point,” continued attrition could trigger cascading failures across agencies and a breakdown of essential government functions.
3. Federal Court Halts Administration’s Attempt to Abolish Four Small Agencies
A federal judge has blocked the administration from unilaterally dissolving four congressionally created agencies:
U.S. Trade and Development Agency
Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board
Inter-American Foundation
Millennium Challenge Corporation
The court held that the executive branch lacks authority to abolish statutory agencies without congressional action. This ruling reinforces a foundational separation-of-powers principle: only Congress can eliminate agencies that Congress itself created.
4. Immigration Judge’s Removal Raises New Fears About Judicial Independence
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Immigration Judge Shuting Chen was abruptly removed from the bench after raising concerns about directives she believed compromised judicial independence.
Her removal is the latest in a string of actions targeting adjudicators across the federal government in the very positions meant to be insulated from political retaliation.
5. Lawsuit Challenges Purge of Federal Workers in DEI Roles
A new lawsuit filed this week alleges that the administration targeted and removed federal employees whose duties involved diversity, equity, and inclusion - a claim with constitutional, statutory, and whistleblower implications.
As with the shutdown RIF litigation, courts are becoming key arbiters of whether federal workers can be removed en masse based on political or ideological criteria.
6. Oversight Infrastructure Weakens Further: DOGE Receives “Failing Grade”
A civil service oversight group rated the Department of Government Ethics (DOGE) as failing after the agency dissolved advisory groups and dismantled internal guardrails designed to protect nonpartisan ethics enforcement.
7. DOJ Resignation Letters Reveal Internal Pressure Campaign
New reporting from CBS News shows the extent of internal dissent at DOJ, where career officials prepared resignation letters as they resisted political pressure on legal matters.
This highlights the fragile position of career attorneys across agencies.
In solidarity,
Suzanne Summerlin
General Counsel, Rise Up: Federal Workers Legal Defense Network
