By Dan Levine and Daniel Wiessner
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A California federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from ordering the U.S. Department of Defense and other federal agencies to carry out the mass firings of thousands of recently hired employees.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco said during a hearing that the U.S. Office of Personnel Management lacked the power to order federal agencies to fire any workers, including probationary employees who typically have less than a year of experience.
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Republican President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, who oversees the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, are spearheading an unprecedented effort to shrink the federal bureaucracy, including through job cuts.
Alsup ordered OPM, the human resources department for federal agencies, to rescind a January 20 memo and a February 14 email directing agencies to identify probationary employees who are not “mission-critical” and terminate them.
Alsup said he could not order the Defense Department itself, which is expected to fire 5,400 probationary employees on Friday, and other agencies not to terminate workers because they are not defendants in the lawsuit brought by several unions and nonprofit groups.
But he suggested that the mass firings of federal workers that began two weeks ago would cause widespread harm, including cuts to national parks, scientific research, and services for veterans.
“Probationary employees are the lifeblood of our government. They come in at a low level and work their way up. That’s how we renew ourselves,” said Alsup, an appointee of Democratic former President Bill Clinton.
The White House and the U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The plaintiffs include the largest federal employee union, the American Federation of Government Employees, four other unions and nonprofits whose missions include advocating for services for veterans and conservation of national parks.
AFGE President Everett Kelley said in a statement that Alsup’s ruling was an important initial victory for federal employees.
“These are rank-and-file workers who joined the federal government to make a difference in their communities, only to be suddenly terminated due to this administration’s disdain for federal employees and desire to privatize their work,” he said.
‘I DON’T BELIEVE IT’
The Trump administration has maintained that the memo and email from OPM merely asked agencies to review their probationary workforces and decide who could potentially be terminated, and did not require them to do anything.
“An order is not usually phrased as a request,” Justice Department lawyer Kelsey Helland told Alsup during the hearing.
But the judge said it was unlikely that virtually every federal agency independently decided to decimate its staff.
“How could that all happen with each agency deciding on its own to do something so aberrational? I don’t believe it,” Alsup said.
The judge specifically ordered OPM to communicate to the Defense Department by tomorrow that its memo and email regarding probationary employees are invalid. And it must give the same message to other agencies including the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management where staff cuts are likely to impact the nonprofits involved in the lawsuit, Alsup said.
The ruling will be in place temporarily while Alsup considers the legal challenge, which claims that OPM has no power over the hiring and firing of federal employees, and that its memo and email amounted to formal rules that can only be adopted through a lengthy administrative process.
Agencies began mass firings of probationary employees earlier this month. A second wave of mass layoffs targeting career employees, including staff at OPM, began this week. A White House memo issued on Wednesday instructed agencies to submit plans by March 13 for a “significant reduction” in staffing.
Unions have filed several other lawsuits challenging Trump’s efforts to reshape the federal workforce in the month since he took office, and have already faced procedural hurdles in pursuing them.
So far, at least two judges have ruled that unions likely lacked legal standing to challenge Trump administration initiatives because they could not show direct harm or were required to first bring their claims to a federal labor board.
Helland, the Justice Department lawyer, on Thursday asked Alsup to follow the lead of those judges. The judge agreed that the unions that filed the lawsuit were likely required to bring their challenges to a federal labor board rather than to court, but he said that the nonprofits could proceed.
(Reporting by Dan Levine in San Francisco and Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York; Editing by Chris Reese, Stephen Coates, Alexia Garamfalvi and Sandra Maler)
