A federal judge in the US state of California ordered six federal agencies to reinstate thousands of probationary employees who lost their jobs as a result of .
Probationary workers are recently hired federal government employees who have less than one year of service in their current roles. They can also be longtime employees who started new roles in their respective organizations.
Although probationary workers have fewer job protections than other government workers, they can only be fired for performance issues.
The ruling was the most significant blow yet to , who have vowed to transform the federal workforce, and it comes as the Trump administration had demanded that government agencies submit plans for a second wave of mass layoffs and budget cuts by Thursday.
Judge calls firings unjustified
District Judge William Alsup, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, said the government was within its rights to reduce federal staff but it had to do so properly and with justification.
“Congress itself has said you can have an agency do a reduction in force, if it’s done correctly under the law,” he said.
But Alsup ruled that the orders issued by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the government’s human resources agency, were unjustified.
“It is a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie,” Alsup said.
“That should not have been done in our country,” he added.
Alsup’s ruling applied to probationary employees at the US departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Energy, Interior and Treasury.
White House will ‘fight back’
The US government contends that the mass firings were lawful, arguing that individual agencies reviewed and determined whether employees on probation were fit for continued employment.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the ruling was an attempt to encroach on the executive branch’s power to hire and fire employees.
“The Trump Administration will immediately fight back against this absurd and unconstitutional order,” Leavitt said in a statement.
“The president has the authority to exercise the power of the entire executive branch. Singular district court judges cannot abuse the power of the entire judiciary to thwart the president’s agenda,” she said.
“If a federal district court judge would like executive powers, they can try and run for president themselves,” Leavitt added.
Leavitt’s comments echo statements from Trump’s first administration, when he and other government officials often complained that judicial rulings against the government position were issued by partisan judges while rulings in favor of the government came from fair, impartial judges.
Edited by: Sean Sinico
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