Judge Says Trump Administration Ordering Mass Firings Was Unlawful

A federal court ruled that the government’s human resources office unlawfully exceeded its authority by ordering agencies to fire thousands of probationary federal workers earlier this month. 

Judge William Alsup’s ruling Thursday is a blow to the Trump administration’s attempt to slash the federal workforce as part of an effort to transform the executive branch in President Donald Trump’s image.

It’s one of the first rulings to describe Trump’s attempts to grind down the federal workforce as illegal.

Alsup’s findings were in response to a lawsuit filed by a coalition of labor unions and organizations challenging a Feb. 14 memo sent by Office of Personnel Management (OPM) directing federal agencies to “separate probationary employees you have not identified as mission-critical.” Plaintiffs argued the firings were carried out based on a lie of poor worker performance.

The memo has so far resulted in federal agencies dismissing an estimated 16,000 federal workers who generally have less than a year on the job, including employees at the National Institutes of Health, Internal Revenue Service and the National Park Service.

“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 at another agency,” Alsup said.

The judge ordered OPM to rescind directives requiring the mass terminations and to notify federal agencies whose employees were involved in the lawsuit that he found the directive illegal. 

He also ordered OPM to alert the Department of Defense, which isn’t a party to the lawsuit but has planned to carry out mass firings this week.

Alsup said he didn’t have the power to reinstate employees who were fired and could not bar agencies from dismissing probationary workers in the future. He acknowledged that agency heads can fire probationary employees, though they cannot be directed to do so by OPM, he said.

While the fired employees could not be reinstated, plaintiffs still hailed Alsup’s ruling as a victory.

“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, the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a statement.