A federal judge has denied federal labor unions’ request to temporarily block the Trump administration from carrying out mass firing of probationary employees and deferred resignation offers, saying the court “likely lacks subject matter jurisdiction” over the matter.
Instead, Judge Christopher Cooper, overseeing the matter, wrote in his ruling that the matter should be brought before the Federal Labor Relations Authority.
“The Court will now deny the motion because it likely lacks subject matter jurisdiction over the unions’ claims,” the judge wrote.
“They must pursue their challenges instead through the scheme established by Congress in the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute (‘FSLMRS’), which provides for administrative review by the Federal Labor Relations Authority (‘FLRA’) in the first instance, followed by judicial review in the courts of appeals,” he added.
The ruling comes after a status hearing on Tuesday in which the judge questioned the plaintiffs, which consisted of five federal unions, including the National Treasury Employees Union, about why they would bring the case before the court instead of going to the FLRA.
During the hearing, the Treasury Department employee union contended that it brought the case to court instead of going to the FLRA because of the scale of the firings and the urgency of the situation.
In his ruling, however, the judge wrote: “NTEU claims that the relief it seeks would be harder to get if it proceeds first before the FLRA, not that it has a right to avoid proceeding before the FLRA at all.”
“The Court acknowledges that district court review of these sweeping executive actions may be more expedient. But NTEU provides no reason why it could not seek relief from the FLRA on behalf of a class of plaintiffs and admits that it would ask other agencies to follow an administrative judge’s ruling in its favor,” he added.
The suit, filed last week, is one of several lawsuits challenging Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency’s large-scale effort to slash the federal workforce.
The suit alleged the Trump administration’s effort to fire massive numbers of federal employees across multiple agencies, including its recent deferred resignation offer to more than 2 million federal employees, violates Congress’ power to establish a federal workforce, as well as federal procedures that dictate how the workforce should be reduced.
“The Executive Branch acting as the ‘woodchipper for bureaucracy’ conflicts with Congress’s role as the creator, funder, and mission setter for the executive branch agencies,” the lawsuit said.
The unions, which represent hundreds of thousands of employees across dozens of federal agencies and departments, sought a temporary restraining order against the Trump administration, claiming that the mass reduction of the federal workforce would lead to a “critical” loss of revenues for unions, as well as their influence at the bargaining table.
The National Treasury Employees Union, the unions claimed, stands to lose “as much as half of its dues revenue and around half of the workers that it represents.”
Lawyers with the Department of Justice pushed back against the allegations, arguing that an order blocking the changes would “interfere with the President’s ability to manage, shape, and streamline the federal workforce to more closely reflect policy preferences and the needs of the American public.”
“The President is charged with directing the Executive Branch workforce, and he has determined that the politically accountable heads of his agencies should take steps to streamline and modernize the workforce through measures including voluntary deferred resignations, removal of certain probationary employees, and RIFs [reductions in force],” the Justice Department wrote in a court filing.
The government also claimed that Trump’s executive action ordering the reductions is “consistent with applicable law” and dismissed the unions’ concerns over their potential loss of revenues and bargaining power as “speculative.”
Since Trump returned to the White House, Musk has been spearheading efforts to reduce the size of government, slash thousands of federal contracts, cut programs deemed to be wasteful and root out fraud.
After ending its deferred resignation offer earlier this month amid court battles challenging the program, the Trump administration has begun layoffs by targeting mostly probationary employees — recent hires who joined the federal workforce within the last one to two years, depending on the agency, and have fewer protections.
This initial round of layoffs could affect more than 200,000 workers hired by the federal government within the last two years, according to data from the Office of Personnel Management.
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