Staffing Reductions and the 'Competing Priorities' Factor

When an agency has fewer people, it will tell the court that every applicant is waiting. TRAC's fourth factor gives that argument weight, but it does not settle a delay case on its own.

Federal agencies reduced their workforces substantially in 2025. In delay litigation, staffing becomes an argument: the agency explains that it is doing what it can with the resources it has, and that ordering it to decide one case will only push others back. The argument can arise in any agency delay case, including those involving Social Security and veterans' benefits. This article explains where it sits in the law and what it does not resolve.

The 2025 reductions

Executive Order 14210 of February 11, 2025, 90 Fed. Reg. 9669, directed agencies to plan large-scale reductions in force and reorganizations. A district court enjoined implementation, and on July 8, 2025, in Trump v. American Federation of Government Employees, the Supreme Court stayed that injunction, concluding that the government was likely to succeed on its argument that the executive order and the implementing memorandum of the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management were lawful. The order addressed the directive and the memorandum; it did not pass on any particular agency's reduction plan.

Where staffing enters the delay analysis

The TRAC factors include the effect of expediting delayed action on agency activities of a higher or competing priority. Courts in the District of Columbia have given that factor substantial weight. In In re Barr Laboratories, Inc., 930 F.2d 72 (D.C. Cir. 1991), the court refused to order the Food and Drug Administration to act on generic drug applications where doing so would simply move the petitioner ahead of others in the same position. Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Council, Inc. v. Norton, 336 F.3d 1094 (D.C. Cir. 2003), likewise treated the agency's allocation of limited resources as part of the inquiry. An agency with fewer staff will invoke both decisions.

What the argument does not settle

• The rule of reason. The first factor still asks whether the agency follows an identifiable order. Reduced staff explains slower movement through a queue; it does not explain a file that is not moving in any queue at all.
• Statutory timetables. Where Congress has set a deadline, the second factor gives it weight that staffing does not erase. 5 U.S.C. § 555(b) still requires an agency to conclude matters within a reasonable time.
• Human welfare. Factors three and five ask about health, welfare and the interests prejudiced by delay. Those can outweigh the competing-priorities factor in an individual case.
• Self-created capacity limits. Whether an agency's own decision to reduce staff should count in its favour when it then cites limited capacity is a question courts have not settled. Plaintiffs can raise it; they should not present it as established law.

Building the record

The government typically supports the argument with a declaration describing workload and staffing. A plaintiff's best response is specific: published processing times for the same form at the same office, the date the file last moved, and evidence that similar cases filed later have been decided. The detailed factor-by-factor treatment in The TRAC Factors: A Practitioner's Deep Dive is a useful companion. Two places where the problem is acute are labor certification at the Department of Labor (PERM Mandamus) and humanitarian petitions at USCIS (HART Service Center Delays).

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