By LINDSAY WHITEHURST, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge in Washington has allowed President Donald Trump’s mass firings of federal workers to move forward.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper decided Thursday he could not grant a motion from unions representing the workers to temporarily block the layoffs. He found that their complaint amounted to an employment dispute and must follow a different process outlined in federal employment law.

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Cooper acknowledged that the Republican president’s second term “has been defined by an onslaught of executive actions that have caused, some say by design, disruption and even chaos in widespread quarters of American society.”

But Cooper, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, a Democrat, wrote that judges are “duty-bound to decide legal issues based on even-handed application of law and precedent — no matter the identity of the litigants or, regrettably at times, the consequences of their rulings for average people.”

The ruling comes as thousands of federal government employees have been shown the door during in the first month of Trump’s second administration.

The administration argued in court the unions failed to show that they were facing the kind of irreparable, immediate harm that would justify an emergency order stopping layoffs.

The unions, representing hundreds of thousands of federal workers, maintain that Trump’s efforts to slash the federal workforce conflicts with Congress’ power to shape the size and direction of agencies through funding decisions, as well as laws detailing how such layoffs must be carried out.

The president of the National Treasury Employees’ Union, Doreen Greenwald, said that Cooper’s decision was a temporary setback and that “federal employees will get their day in court to challenge the unlawful mass firings and other attacks on their jobs, their agencies, and their service to the country.”

The lawsuit is among more than 80 challenging a range of actions Trump has undertaken with his blitz of executive orders. Unions also filed a separate suit challenging mass firings in California this week.