As the Trump administration seeks to drastically reduce the number of federal employees, it has voiced concern to a federal court that releasing its plans to do so would hurt its ability to retain current workers and recruit new ones.

The White House made the argument in a court filing responding to a judge’s order that the administration release its Agency Reduction in Force and Reorganization plans, which all agencies have submitted but have largely been kept a secret. The release requirement was part of District Judge Susan Illston’s larger decision that temporarily paused agencies from carrying out their RIF plans for two weeks.

In response to the sweeping decision, Stephen Billy, a senior advisor at the Office of Management and Budget, said in a declaration to the court that releasing the plans would cause “irreparable harm” to the government. The plans, or ARRPs, are distinct from actual RIFs, he said, and contain proposed changes that would take years to implement.

He added they contain sensitive information that would “seriously undermine agency operations” if they became public because they include plans and strategies for union negotiations, regulatory changes, future appropriations requests, congressional engagement and agency IT management. Billy also said the ARRPs contain plans that could hurt recruitment and retention, despite ARRPs themselves being designed to strategize ways to reduce staffing totals.

He stressed the plans are deliberative in nature and contain ideas that may never come to fruition. The Justice Department added that nothing in the plans “irrevocably commits an agency to taking any specific step.”

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