The Agriculture Department’s reorganization of agencies including the Food and Nutrition Administration and Agricultural Research Service is designed to significantly reduce personnel and will cause “considerable public harm,” unions, cities and counties and nonprofit groups argue in a lawsuit filed in California today.
The plaintiffs cite USDA’s own reorganization plan, which was filed along with a complaint and request for a preliminary injunction to halt the department’s plans.
USDA officials have argued that reorganization will result in a more efficient department and more judicious use of taxpayer dollars. A USDA spokesperson said the department won’t comment on pending litigation.
But the plaintiffs say the department’s own plan “is clear that its purpose is to downsize the agency by eliminating thousands of positions.”
The Agency RIF and Reorganization Plan that the plaintiffs filed in court today says it is the “first step in the plan to unwind the excesses of the Biden Administration and prioritize an efficient workforce structure and level.”
“To accomplish that, the ARRP sets an express goal of reducing the agency’s workforce by at least 23% (or a 31% reduction other than public safety and inspection),” a brief supporting the injunction request says (emphasis in original).
“The ARRP sets specific target reductions of at least 46% of FNA (previously named the Food and Nutrition Service), with similar targets for agricultural research agencies (43% of ARS and the Economic Research Service, 39% of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture) and the Rural Development mission area (47%), along with 15% of the Forest Service (22% if a public safety carve-out is excluded), 28% of the Foreign Agricultural Service, and 34% of the Natural Resources Conservation Service, among others,” the brief says.
“These reductions were included in a specific chart euphemistically called ‘USDA’s plan for workforce optimization,’” the brief says.
An analysis released by the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition found that "between January 2025 and January 2026, USDA lost approximately 20,000 employees, according to staffing data published by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Every USDA agency was affected, and staff losses were spread across the entire nation. Our analysis attributes the majority of staff losses (~15,000) to the so-called Deferred Resignation Program, a program run by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to encourage federal employees to voluntarily leave their positions."
The analysis was conducted by NSAC in partnership with Bernie Kluger, Managing Partner at Prospect Partners, LLC.
The department's website says it has approximately 100,000 employees, but it's not clear if that number is still valid after the DRPs and other staff departures.
“USDA sought authorization for the actions in this reorganization plan through the budget process for fiscal year 2026,” the plaintiff groups and their lawyers said in a news release. “However, Congress not only rejected this process, but additionally specifically directed USDA not to take actions restructuring the agency or downsizing staff without further congressional approval.”
The department “has not obtained such approval,” the release says. “Still, USDA officials are continuing to push forward with an unlawful reorganization plan, implementing actions that have harmed and will continue to harm USDA employees impacted by the restructuring and the farmers, families, and communities who rely on them to execute USDA’s mission.”
The ARRP “confirms that USDA intends to achieve these reductions by forced attrition caused by relocation,” the plaintiffs said in their brief. “It explains that employees will be forced to either accept transfers to other parts of the country or quit.”
The department anticipates “a significant number of employees will decline geographic reassignments out of the [national capital region] or existing regional or state offices” to hubs located in different parts of the country.
The ARRP says the FNA will “deemphasize the food stamp program,” a reference to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
“While USDA, to advance one of the president’s ‘priorities,’ aims to cut FNA staff by nearly 50%, the ARRP does not provide any program or function-based justifications for those cuts,” the plaintiffs’ brief says.
“USDA’s actions are poised to cause considerable public harm as the forced attrition depletes its agencies’ capacity to conduct important research, protect our forests, and, critically, help ensure that low-income women and children across the nation can eat,” the brief says.
“From research on bees that helps the entire country to fire prevention in the Pacific Northwest, the USDA’s actions, secretly motivated by this administration’s holy grail of workforce reduction, are poised to have terrible, cascading effects,” it says.
The groups cite a July 2025 memo from Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins that says the reorganization plan “is intended to ‘ensure the size of USDA’s workforce aligns with financial resources and priorities.’” In the same memo, Rollins says USDA “is not conducting a large-scale workforce reduction.”
“An agency that provides a public explanation that contradicts its own internal rationale runs afoul of the [Administrative Procedure Act’s] requirement to provide a reasoned explanation,” the groups contend.
They also say Congress explicitly prohibited the agency “from using funds appropriated for fiscal year 2026 for reorganization or staffing reductions unless affirmatively approved by Congress.”
Among the plaintiffs are the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).
Others include the National WIC Association and Prince George’s County, Maryland, “which is home to the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center,” targeted for decommissioning.
The Alliance of Crop, Soil and Environmental Science Societies is another plaintiff. ACSESS is “a nonprofit organization that manages and supports three membership associations: the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America, whose approximately 7,500 members includes USDA employees,” according to the groups’ news release.
“The coalition is represented in the case by lead co-counsel Democracy Forward and Altshuler Berzon LLP, along with Protect Democracy, Public Rights Project, and Democracy Defenders Fund, and counsel for local governments,” the release says.
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