AP reader question: Is it legal to fire furloughed federal workers during a shutdown?

Here’s a question about the shutdown submitted by an Associated Press reader, G:

Is it legal to fire furloughed federal workers during a shutdown?

This question has prompted a fierce conversation, and it ultimately might be up to the courts to decide.

Before the shutdown went into effect, a group of labor unions filed a lawsuit claiming that the Trump administration violated the law by threatening to perform a mass firing of federal workers during a shutdown.

The Office of Management and Budget said late last month that agencies should consider layoffs for shutdown programs whose funding is not otherwise funded and is “not consistent with the President’s priorities,” and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said this week that layoffs were “imminent.”

There are federal statutes that lay out how reductions in force – or “RIFs” – are supposed to be carried out, including giving employees a 60-day notice, and some Democrats including newly elected Rep. James Walkinshaw of Virginia have called any plans for mass firings an “illegal power grab.”