A federal judge on Friday held that the Trump administration acted unlawfully in directing the dismissal of thousands of federal employees, but declined to order their reinstatement, citing recent rulings by the US Supreme Court.
US District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco stuck by his preliminary conclusion in the case that the US Office of Personnel Management in February unlawfully ordered numerous agencies to fire probationary employees en masse.
Unions, nonprofits and Washington state had sued after Trump’s administration moved to fire roughly 25,000 probationary employees, who typically have less than a year of service, though some are longtime workers in new jobs.
Abiding By Supreme Court Order
Alsup said ordinarily he would “set aside OPM’s unlawful directive and unwind its consequences, returning the parties to the ex-ante status quo, and as a consequence, probationers to their posts”.
“But the Supreme Court has made clear enough by way of its emergency docket that it will overrule judicially granted relief respecting hirings and firings within the executive, not just in this case but in others,” Alsup wrote.
Too Much Had Happened Since SC Move
In April, the Supreme Court paused a preliminary injunction Alsup issued in the case requiring six agencies to reinstate 17,000 employees while the litigation moved forward.
Alsup said too much had happened since the Supreme Court’s April decision for him to order employees to be reinstated now, as many had gotten new jobs while the administration transformed the government.
But Alsup, an appointee of Democratic President Bill Clinton, said the workers “nevertheless continue to be harmed by OPM’s pretextual termination ‘for performance,’ and that harm can be redressed without reinstatement”.
He ordered 19 agencies, including the US Departments of Defence, Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Energy, Interior and Treasury, to update the employees’ files by November 14 and barred them from following OPM directives to fire workers.
Representatives for the plaintiffs and the White House did not respond to requests for comment on Saturday.
(With inputs from Reuters)
