A federal judge in San Francisco declared Thursday that the Trump administration’s mass termination of probationary employees was likely unlawful and ordered the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to rescind its earlier instructions and temporarily halt layoffs within federal agencies represented in the suit.
The lawsuit, filed by a coalition of labor unions and organizations, alleged that the OPM (the government’s form of a human resources department) directly ordered federal agencies to fire probationary employees despite not having the authoritative precedent to do so. As underscored by U.S. District Judge William Alsup in court Thursday, the OPM does not have congressional authority to hire or fire any employees in agencies outside of its own and temporarily blocked the Trump administration from ordering agencies to carry out mass firings of some employees.
“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,” Alsup said while explaining his ruling. “It can hire its own employees, yes. Can fire them. But it cannot order or direct some other agency to do so.”
“OPM has no authority to tell any agency in the United States government, other than itself, who they can hire and who they can fire, period. So on the merits, I think, we start with that important proposition,” he continued.
Alsup’s temporary restraining order will cover agencies like the Veterans Affairs Department, the National Parks Service, the Small Business Administration, the Bureau of Land Management, and the National Science Foundation among others that were represented by the lawsuit’s coalition.
Attorneys for the government argued that the OPM did not order agencies to fire probationary employees, but simply asked instead.
“How could so much of the workforce be amputated suddenly overnight? It’s so irregular and widespread, so aberrant in the history of the country,” Alsup said in response, lucidly not buying the argument. “I believe they were directed or ordered. That’s the way the evidence points.”
The judge also described probationary employees, workers who are typically in the first or second year of their job, as the “lifeblood of our government.”
“They come in at the low level and they work their way up, and that’s how we renew ourselves and reinvent ourselves,” Alsup said.
“I’m going to count on the government to do the right thing and go further than I have ordered and to let some of these agencies know what I have ruled,” the judge continued, insinuating his hopes for his temporary relief to be exercised to broader effect.
Around 200,000 probationary employees work across federal agencies, according to the Associated Press.
“This ruling by Judge Alsup is an important initial victory for patriotic Americans across this country who were illegally fired from their jobs by an agency that had no authority to do so,” Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a statement per CNN.
“OPM’s direction to agencies to engage in the indiscriminate firing of federal probationary employees is illegal, plain and simple, and our union will keep fighting until we put a stop to these demoralizing and damaging attacks on our civil service once and for all.”
Alsup scheduled a hearing in two weeks to hear from key identities in the case, including Charles Ezell, the acting director of OPM, according to NPR.
Since launching the Department of Government Efficiency in January, Elon Musk has spearheaded an unprecedented and insatiable downsizing effort within government that has affected a large portion of federal agencies, their funding, and their employees.
