Almost 25k Federal Workers Reinstated, Trump Administration Says

By Jacob Knutson

The White House with the fountain and the South lawn in front of it.

The Trump administration for the first time acknowledged that federal agencies have recently reinstated almost 25,000 fired probationary employees, according to new court filings. 

The reinstatements came after a federal judge in Maryland issued a two-week stay last week in a case brought against the Trump administration by 20 Democratic attorneys general representing the District of Columbia, Maryland and 18 other states.

Judge James Bredar, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, was the second federal judge to rule against the Trump administration’s mass firing of new employees who had worked for less than a year as part of its attempt to slash the federal workforce.

Judge William Alsup, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton in San Francisco, ruled that the government’s human resources office, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), unlawfully exceeded its authority by ordering agencies to fire the probationary workers.

In filings Monday night, the Trump administration gave Bredar agency-by-agency details on the 24,750 employees who have been reinstated since late last week. 

They include nearly 1,700 employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs, over 3,200 at Department of Health and Human Services, and over 5,000 at the Department of Agriculture.

The attorneys general argued that the federal agencies falsely told the workers that they were being fired based on their performance and rather fired the employees in mass without giving individual determinations related to their performance. They also said the federal government failed to give the states a 60-day notice so they could prepare for an increase in unemployment.

“Rather than comply with their legal obligations, Defendants summarily terminated probationary employees en masse, providing termination notices to the affected employees by form letters and emails, which frequently included errors and in many instances failed to include even the employee’s name or job title,” the states’ complaint reads.