A judge has temporarily blocked President Donald Trump from furloughing 2,200 employees of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), hours before it was due to happen.
Judge Carl Nichols issued a "limited" temporary restraining order in response to a last-minute lawsuit filed by two unions trying to save the agency.
The order will remain in place for a week until midnight on February 14.
Trump has argued that the foreign aid agency USAID is not a valuable use of taxpayer money and wants to break it up - with plans to furlough about 10,000 of the agency's staff, except for 611.
About 500 employees have already been placed on administrative leave and another 2,200 were due to join them starting at midnight on Friday (05:00 GMT).
But the last-minute lawsuit Friday argued that the government is violating the U.S. Constitution and that workers are suffering harm.
Judge Nichols sided with the unions, saying they would suffer “irreparable harm” if the court did not intervene, while “the government would suffer no harm.”
The order also reinstates 500 workers already on administrative leave.
“All USAID employees currently on administrative leave will be reinstated as of that date and will be given full access to their email, payment and security notification systems until that date, and no additional employees will be placed on administrative leave before that date,” Nichols wrote.
The judge will also consider a request for a longer-term break at Wednesday’s hearing.
It is not clear from the court order what will happen to the agency’s remaining employees.
As the ruling was announced, officials were removing and covering up USAID signs at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. The agency’s website is also inaccessible, with only a landing page about the layoffs.
USAID is the world's biggest aid donor - with much of its budget spent on health programmes around the world. Two-thirds of its 10,000 staff work overseas.
It is one of many federal agencies his administration is targeting as it works to slash federal spending in the US.
The Republican campaigned on overhauling the government and formed an advisory body named the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) - led by tech billionaire Elon Musk - to slash the budget.