Federal Appeals Court Allows Trump to Fire Over 25K Probationary Employees

A federal appeals court panel cleared the way for President Donald Trump to fire over 25,000 probationary federal workers who were targeted in mass firings earlier this year.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’s 2-1 vote stayed an order from a federal judge in Maryland requiring the Trump administration to reinstate dismissed federal workers in D.C. and the 19 states who sued the federal government over the firings.

Democratic attorneys general representing D.C. and the states alleged that federal agencies falsely told the workers that they were being fired based on their performance. They also claimed the federal government failed to give the states a 60-day notice so they could prepare for increases in unemployment claims.

The Maryland judge’s order was the last remaining block preventing the Trump administration from firing probationary workers after the Supreme Court this week paused a separate order issued by a federal judge in California that also required the Trump administration to rehire thousands of federal employees.

In reversing the reinstatements, Circuit Judges Allison Rushing, a Trump appointee, and James Wilkinson, an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan, in part cited the Supreme Court’s pause and the Trump administration’s argument that the district court lacked jurisdiction over the plaintiff’s claims.

In a dissenting opinion, Circuit Judge DeAndrea Benjamin, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden, said D.C. and the states “clearly have standing to challenge the process by which the Government has engaged in mass firings.”