Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration joins lawsuit against Trump to block federal worker firings

The city of Chicago is joining other cities in suing President Donald Trump and his administration in a bid to halt the firing of federal employees.

The lawsuit — filed late Monday in federal court in San Francisco by an array of unions, nonprofits and local governments — asks a judge to block the implementation of a Trump executive order directing his Department of Government Efficiency to conduct mass firings and far-reaching reorganization.

Johnson called the lawsuit an effort to “decisively call out the reckless dismantling of our government.”

“The Trump Administration’s plan to gut the federal government threatens our way of life and would significantly impact our ability to keep residents and communities safe and healthy,” Johnson said in a statement. “We cannot abide by that.”

Cities including San Francisco and Baltimore, and unions such as the American Federation of Government Employees and Service Employees International Union also signed on, alongside 21 other named plaintiffs.

The group targeted a broad array of figures in Trump’s government as defendants, from DOGE head Elon Musk to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The lawsuit asks that Trump’s actions be declared in violation of the Constitution for “engaging in wholesale transformation of the federal government without any Congressional authorization.”

Trump’s attempted nationwide cuts could squash services needed by Chicagoans, Johnson’s administration argued in his statement about the suit.

The elimination of the National Weather Service would undermine efforts to respond to severe weather, cuts to the Federal Emergency Management Agency would harm local disaster relief work and Environmental Protection Agency layoffs could hinder plans to remediate nearby contaminated sites, the mayor’s statement said.

Cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services that have impeded national data collection have already made it more difficult for Chicago to track and respond to health crises, Johnson’s administration added.

Education Department cuts last month gutted Chicago’s Office for Civil Rights of at least 50 employees. The same week as that layoff, aldermen said Veterans Affairs outreach services across the city were unexpectedly  slashed amid another workforce reduction.

Trump has described his sweeping effort to overhaul the country’s government as an effort to cut down on bloat and gain more control over policy wherever federal money is spent. For months, leaders in schools, all levels of government and non-profits that pull in federal dollars have scrambling to understand where funding cuts and layoffs are occurring and might stay in place.

Johnson has long loudly opposed Trump, both on the campaign trail for former Vice President Kamala Harris and since Trump’s election victory. Earlier this month, he described Trump’s promises of federal funding cuts as “terrorism.”

“Trying to force your will to break the spirit of working people in order to have a conversation, that’s terrorism. We’re not going to negotiate with terrorists,” Johnson said.

But the lawsuit filed Monday marks for Johnson likely the most direct action against the Republican-controlled federal government that has already summoned him to testify in Congress and is ramping up threats to punish Chicago for its so-called “sanctuary status.”

Johnson continued his sharp rebukes of Trump earlier Monday. Speaking alongside a host of mayors and police superintendents at an unrelated safety conference downtown, Johnson said Trump “is off, he’s just off.”

Asked how he would handle losing federal funding as a result of the city’s immigration policies, Johnson said no city could prepare for such a disinvestment. He added that “there are those in power at the federal level who refuse to accept the results of the last Civil War … and they are working to relitigate it.”

“The idea of our tax dollars — and we send billions of them to the federal government — that that would be withheld because of politics, because of someone’s political views or local ordinances, that is not only raggedy, but it is the most dangerous form of government that we’ve seen in a generation,” Johnson said.

Originally Published: April 29, 2025 at 10:02 AM CDT