The Trump administration continued to face setbacks in court this week over its efforts to drastically downsize the size of the government, while plaintiffs in some of the cases accused the government of trying to sidestep judicial orders.
A federal judge in California found a U.S. Office of Personnel Management memo that directed the firing of thousands of probationary employees was unlawful and should be rescinded, while another in Washington, D.C. ordered the restoration of foreign aid that was supposed to be freed weeks ago.
The plaintiffs — and the judge — in the foreign aid case have accused the government of continued stonewalling, while plaintiffs in cases involving the suspension of refugee program funding charged the administration is failing to fully comply with court orders.
Here’s a look at the swirl of legal developments over the past week.
Mass firings of probationary workers ‘illegal’
A federal judge in California on Thursday ordered OPM to rescind a memo and email telling agencies to get rid of probationary employees. The directions, communicated in a Jan. 20 memo and Feb. 14 internal email, are “illegal” and “should be stopped, rescinded,” Judge William Alsup said.
“The Office of Personnel Management does not have any authority whatsoever under any statute in the history of the universe, to hire and fire employees within another agency,” the judge found. “It can hire its own employees, yes. Can fire them. But it cannot order or direct some other agency to do so,” Alsup said.
His ruling did not reinstate the thousands of employees who have already been dismissed, but it came ahead of expected terminations at the Defense Department Friday of probationary employees —largely workers who’ve been in a job for less than two years.
‘Death, impoverishment, sickness, and waste’
On Tuesday, a D.C. federal judge ordered for the third time the government to comply with his Feb. 13 order blocking a blanket freeze on foreign aid by the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. The frustrated judge also went a step farther, ordering them to free the funding by midnight Wednesday after a lawyer for the Justice Department couldn’t tell him what steps they’d taken to comply with his order.
The government then said for the first time in a filing the next day that it would take “weeks” to unfreeze the money, and appealed to a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals for a stay of the deadline. The appeals court rejected the government’s bid, and the government then turned to the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Roberts issued a stay.
The plaintiffs on Friday asked the high court to reject the appeal, and said the government had gone to the court “with an emergency of its own making.”
In court filings in the underlying case, the government argued it’s now in compliance with the order because all of the 12,000 grants and awards have since undergone individual reviews and Secretary of State Marco Rubio “has now made a final decision with respect to each award, on an individualized basis, affirmatively electing to either retain the award or terminate it.” The filing said over 10,000 of the awards have been terminated.
The plaintiffs argue those terminations are unlawful — and the delays have been catastrophic in more ways than one.
“There is no dispute whatsoever that Defendants’ actions have led to death, impoverishment, sickness, and waste” around the world, they wrote, and they “do not address the thousands of American jobs — and counting — that have been lost as a direct result of the blanket freeze.”
Refugee admission ‘antics’
A federal judge in Seattle on Tuesday blocked Trump’s executive order pausing the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, agreeing with the plaintiffs’ arguments that the order likely exceeded the president’s authority.
“The president has substantial discretion to suspend refugee admissions. But that authority is not limitless,” U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead said in his decision. “He cannot ignore Congress’ detailed framework for refugee admissions and the limits it places on the president’s ability to suspend the same.”
Whitehead said he would issue a written decision in the coming days, and on Thursday, the aid groups that had filed the suit said the government was trying to circumvent his impending decision by formally deciding to terminate their refugee assistance contracts. They’ve asked for an emergency hearing to “ensure that Defendants are not permitted to evade this Court’s bench ruling and forthcoming written order with antics designed to confuse the state of play.”
The government is being sued in a separate but similar case by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which was also seeking a restraining order. They say the suspension has prevented the organization “from receiving the funds necessary to carry out its mission to assist the refugees the government already placed in its care.”
On Thursday, the government filed “a notice of change of material facts,” informing the judge that USCCB’s contract had been terminated, so its claim should now be considered a contract dispute that should be heard in the Court of Federal Claims. Joseph Carilli, a lawyer for the government, doubled down on that stance at a hearing on Friday. “This harm is about money, they want reimbursement. This is about money,” he said.
The organization said it’s about its mission, and contended the judge should still take action. “The government cannot escape review of its unlawful suspension by effecting an unlawful termination,” it said in a filing.
More DOGE restrictions
A federal judge in Maryland issued a temporary restraining order barring OPM and the Department of Education from allowing personnel with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing records with sensitive personal information.
The order by U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman follows a similar ruling last week barring DOGE from access to records at the Treasury Department.
Boardman found that the plaintiffs in the case, which include members of several major unions, had shown that the Education Department and OPM “likely violated the Privacy Act by disclosing their personal information to DOGE affiliates without their consent.”
“DOGE affiliates have been granted access to systems of record that contain some of the plaintiffs’ most sensitive data — Social Security numbers, dates of birth, home addresses, income and assets, citizenship status, and disability status — and their access to this trove of personal information is ongoing,” the judge wrote. “There is no reason to believe their access to this information will end anytime soon because the government believes their access is appropriate.”
In a separate case involving DOGE’s access to Labor Department data, a federal judge in D.C. ordered a DOGE official to provide documents and testify under oath about the office’s operations, which the judge described as “opaque.”
ICE banned from some houses of worship
In Maryland, a federal judge issued an order restricting immigration raids at or near houses of worship owned by a group of religious organizations that filed suit challenging a new policy allowing such raids.
The previous policy, which had been in effect since the early 1990s, had protected “sensitive locations” such as churches from immigration enforcement without special approval.
The order by U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang of Maryland only applies to the religious organizations that filed the suit.
Injunction on federal funding freeze
On Tuesday, a federal judge in Washington issued a preliminary injunction barring the administration from reinstating a federal funding freeze directed by the Office of Management and Budget that had caused chaos and confusion across the country.
“Many organizations had to resort to desperate measures just to stay operational,” Judge Loren AliKhan wrote in her order. “The pause placed critical programs for children, the elderly, and everyone in between in serious jeopardy. Because the public’s interest in not having trillions of dollars arbitrarily frozen cannot be overstated, Plaintiffs have more than met their burden here,” she wrote.
The OMB directive was later rescinded, but the White House added to the confusion by then saying it was “NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze.”
AliKhan and a federal judge in Rhode Island both issued restraining orders blocking the freeze from going back into effect. The Rhode Island judge, John J. McConnell, has yet to rule on a motion for a preliminary injunction in that case.
Second appeals court loss on Trump birthright citizenship order
For the second time in a week, a panel of federal appeals court judges handed a loss to the Justice Department’s attempts to implement President Donald Trump’s executive order limiting birthright citizenship.
The government had sought a stay of a lower court’s ruling barring the order from going into effect while it appeals.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied that bid in a ruling Friday. “We join the Ninth Circuit in finding that the government has not made a ‘strong showing’ that it is ‘likely to succeed on the merits’ of its argument,” the three-judge panel’s ruling said.
Trump’s order aims to limit birthright citizenship to people who have at least one parent who is a United States citizen or permanent resident. At least three judges have blocked the directive, finding it violates the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
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