SAN JOSE, Calif. — Fresh off a win in court last week against the Trump administration, Santa Clara County and San Francisco are joining a national coalition in a new lawsuit against the federal government — this time taking aim at Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

The lawsuit, which was filed Monday in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, challenges President Donald Trump’s “critical transformation of the federal bureaucracy,” which he laid out in a Feb. 11 executive order. The order gave new guidance for DOGE, tasking federal agencies to work with the Musk-led initiative to reduce the size of the federal workforce and limit hiring.

But the coalition, which includes unions, nonprofits and several other local governments, says he doesn’t have the power to do that.

“We have been forced to file this lawsuit because yet again Donald Trump is violating the Constitution,” San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu said at a press conference on Tuesday. “Trump cannot radically restructure federal agencies through massive layoffs with the mere stroke of the pen on an executive order. Only Congress has that power to change the federal government in the ways that Trump has directed.”

Nine presidents — ranging from Herbert Hoover to Ronald Reagan — have been granted reorganization authority by Congress to create or reshape federal agencies. It was used by Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 to consolidate all national parks and monuments into the National Park System and by Richard Nixon in 1970 to establish the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration within the Department of Commerce.

Trump has enlisted DOGE, along with the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management, “to serve his goals of radical transformation,” and mandate other agencies to create plans to reorganize and reduce their workforce, the lawsuit said.

Those plans are already taking shape. The Department of Health and Human Services announced last month that a “dramatic restructuring” would save taxpayers $1.8 billion per year by laying off 10,000 employees — many of whom were employed by the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. The Small Business Administration is also expected to reduce its workforce by 43% and the Department of Labor has already put some employees on administrative leave, according to Bloomberg Law.

DOGE claims that it has saved taxpayers $160 billion, but a new analysis from the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service estimates that putting employees on paid leave and rehiring federal workers who were mistakenly fired will cost $135 billion.

While some of the coalition includes labor unions representing federal workers and nonprofits with national interests, the six local governments — Santa Clara County; San Francisco; King County, Washington; Harris County, Texas; Chicago and Baltimore — argue that Trump’s actions will cause them “ongoing harm” due to “delays and reductions in services provided by the federal agencies on which they rely.”

Santa Clara County Counsel Tony LoPresti said that the “interface between the federal government and the counties are already being impacted.”

“We’ve seen a number of programs and a number of services that have really slowed down or been frozen altogether,” he said.”We’re seeing quite a bit of volatility and frankly confusion in the federal government oftentimes about what agencies are supposed to do.”

The lawsuit lists a slew of agencies and the impacts that laying off federal workers will have on local governments. One of those agencies is NOAA — earlier this year, hundreds of employees, including weather forecasters, who were on probationary status were fired. NOAA is also expected to fall prey to massive budget cuts later this year. In the lawsuit, the coalition argues that many of the local governments rely on NOAA for forecasting, modeling and other real-time weather data that in some cases help them prepare for an emergency.

Santa Clara County Board President Otto Lee said that he is “proud” the county is taking a stand. The county is expected to release its recommended budget later this week, and officials have been bracing for the impact that frozen or canceled federal funds will have on the fiscal situation — nearly 30% of the county’s budget comes from the feds.

“We are not going to let our institution die by a thousand cuts,” Lee said, “We are going to stop this political destruction nightmare to stabilize the government for all of us.”

Over the last few months, Santa Clara County, San Francisco and the state of California have emerged as leaders in the legal battle against the Trump administration.

On Tuesday, the state also announced a lawsuit against DOGE over cuts to the AmeriCorps national service program. Last week, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against Trump in a case filed by Santa Clara County and San Francisco, effectively blocking him from withholding federal funds from jurisdictions that have declared themselves as “sanctuaries” for immigrants living in the country illegally. All three parties have filed lawsuits around Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship, as well.

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