Layoffs of state public health workers have been rescinded by the Minnesota Department of Health two months after it issued them in response to federal grant cuts by the Trump administration.
Ongoing legal challenges to the grant cuts allowed the state to preserve its workforce, according to a statement issued Friday by the Minnesota Department of Health. The state budget is being finalized, with Gov. Tim Walz calling a special legislative session on Monday, and a draft proposal preserves funding for the Health Department as well.
“We celebrate this positive step while also recognizing the disruption and chaos that our staff and partners have had to endure,” the department said in its statement.
The department initially announced layoffs in late March for about 170 workers and contractors, after learning that the Trump administration was cutting more than $230 million in public health grants.
The state rescinded most of those layoffs in April, after discovering some of the workers’ pay was funded by other sources than the federal grants and the layoffs wouldn’t necessarily close the state’s budget hole.
The amended plan at the time was to issue new layoff notices to about 100 workers, which would have taken effect in May. But that didn’t happen either.
The Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (MAPE) union representing the state health workers had criticized the department’s handling of the grant cuts and the layoffs that caused so much stress. Other states hadn’t been as swift in pursuing layoffs in response to the federal cuts, union leaders argued.
“This whole process has been filled with heartbreak and confusion,” said Lydia Fess, a MAPE union representative, in a statement in mid-April. She initially lost her epidemiology job in the first round of cuts before getting it back two weeks later. Fess wasn’t immediately available on Friday to comment about the layoffs being rescinded.
