Federal workers sue USDA over forced relocations, attrition

The American Federation of Government Employees sued the USDA, alleging its reorganization plan, unveiled by Secretary Brooke Rollins in July 2025, is designed to force employee attrition through office closures and relocations rather than genuine restructuring. The plan would close seven Food and Nutrition Administration regional offices, consolidating them into five hubs far from where current employees live, affecting programs like SNAP, which serves 40 million people monthly, and WIC, which reaches over 40% of the country's infants.

The lawsuit says USDA performed no assessment of how resulting attrition would affect its mandated responsibilities, and argues the plan violates the Administrative Procedure Act as arbitrary and capricious. It also alleges USDA proceeded despite a congressional directive barring restructuring actions until Congress signaled approval, with the agency conceding in letters to committees that its actions triggered that prohibition.

USDA received nearly 47,000 public comments on the plan, the overwhelming majority negative, focused on workforce attrition and weakened operations such as the Forest Service's ability to manage public lands. The agency issued a summary of the comments in December but gave no substantive response before pushing ahead with relocation notices this spring.

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