One federal employee has taken out a bank loan. Another says she’s planning to seek help from a food pantry. A third says his family will likely need to take out loans, or incur credit card debt, to get by. Those stories and more were detailed in court filings this week in a lawsuit challenging the legality of Trump administration efforts to lay off federal employees connected to the partial government shutdown. Judge Susan Illston of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California already has issued a temporary ruling blocking the government from laying off an array of federal workers during the government shutdown. The employee declarations were filed as labor groups, which brought the federal lawsuit, ask the court for a more permanent block that will last while the case is pending. They contain examples of the searing toll of the shutdown and the termination notices, outlining deep worries about their ability to pay expenses and alarm over what would happen if they lose their health care. Daniel T. Ronneberg, an U.S. Air Force veteran who works at the Federal Aviation Administration as a regulation analyst, was furloughed earlier this month and wrote that he’s terrified that he will lose his health care coverage if he is laid off. Ronneberg, who received a life-saving kidney transplant days before the partial government shutdown, framed that outcome as a life and death matter, saying he will not be able to afford his post-surgery treatment if he loses his job and health care coverage. The medications he currently takes would cost him about $9,360 a month without health care insurance, he wrote. He also has to take laboratory tests each week and see various physicians to monitor kidney function. Any break in health care coverage, particularly one due to a termination during the government shutdown, is enough to put his life “in serious jeopardy,” Ronneberg wrote. “If I am terminated, I will not be able to simply budget my finances or miss medications and doctor’s appointments. If I am terminated, my life will be at risk and, at the very least, my family will face financial ruin,” he wrote. “I cannot afford to live without my health insurance—literally. Therefore, if I were to receive a RIF notice, I would need to immediately try to find another job with comparable health insurance which would be extremely difficult to do in the current job market that is flooded with other skilled and highly educated former federal employees,” Ronneberg wrote. [Related: Judge sounds ready to expand block on shutdown layoffs] Dorothy Roper, an IT specialist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, wrote that she’s already had to take out a bank loan to pay for day-to-day expenses and her child’s college tuition. Roper, who has more than four decades of experience in the federal government, said she has medical debt, and worries that her credit score would be impacted if she’s not able to continue making payments. “I cannot afford to incur any further debt,” Roper wrote. “I am attempting to move money out of my retirement account, assuming that is even possible during the shutdown, to help cover my expenses in [the] short term.” “I am worried that this will negatively impact my long-term financial health, but I have no choice,” she wrote. Roper, 63, also expressed concerns it would be tough for her to find another job, in part she said because employers usually prioritize younger employees. LaMarla Stevens, a management analyst in the Office of Housing Counseling, was on maternity leave when she received a termination notice earlier this month. The notice said her last day would be in December. Stevens wrote that she expected to have several more months of maternity leave to care for her son. Now, she’ll have to go back into the workforce earlier than anticipated. “Even if I am able to find a job, going back to work means incurring months of childcare expenses that I had not planned for and that I don’t know if I will be able to afford,” Stevens wrote. On top of that, her husband and children rely on her federal health care insurance. “Having a new baby is already extraordinarily stressful, but the idea of losing our insurance at a time when we have so many medical expenses has made it even more overwhelming,” Stevens wrote. The filings contained other stories too. An administrative officer with the CDC said she and her husband were already living paycheck-to-paycheck. They were on the verge of paying off debt from the birth of her daughter in January. But instead of paying that down, they used the money for diapers and formula. A program analyst at the Minority Business Development Agency said she’s planning to seek help from a food pantry and forgo paying her student loans. “I don’t feel like I can plan my life more than one week at a time,” she said. The employee had previously received a termination notice before in April, only to be reinstated in June, she wrote. After the first notice, she wrote that she could no longer afford rent, had to break her lease and live on her sister’s couch. “I am worried about retaliation from the administration for speaking up. But I decided to speak up because right now I am more worried about food and housing than I am worried about retaliation,” she wrote in the declaration.
