The Justice Department said a law protecting the officials from arbitrary removal is an unconstitutional intrusion on presidential authority.

A group of five labor unions had argued that President Trump's effort to shrink the size of the federal workforce were illegal.

The Trump administration's mass federal employee layoffs can continue after a judge on Thursday declined that he had jurisdiction to pause the actions. Why it matters: The judge referred the claims brought by labor unions,

The U.S. Department of Justice has reportedly fired more than two dozen employees, most of whom worked in immigration courts. An immigration judge appointed to Massachusetts, who was fired on Friday,