Thousands of fired federal employees can be temporarily reinstated by a judge

A federal judge ruled on the firing of probationary employees and challenged the government’s human resource management role in the wake of the September 11 hiring decision

He ruled on Thursday after another federal judge in San Francisco ordered the administration to let fired workers return to work. The administration filed an appeal.

“It is a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that is a lie,” Judge William Alsup, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, said before issuing his ruling from the bench.

The Thursday decision marks a significant stand against President Trump’s sweeping efforts to remake the federal government. The White House pledged to appeal.

The administration’s job cuts targeted federal workers with probationary status, which usually means newer workers, and makes them easier to let go. Employees recently promoted into a new position can also be considered on the outside.

Many employees were terminated for performance reasons even though they received positive feedback from their supervisors.

The judge also ordered the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to prove within seven days that it had offered reinstatement to all fired probationary employees at the Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior, Treasury and Veterans Affairs.

Requests for comment were submitted to the agencies affected by the judge’s ruling. Spokespeople for the VA and the Interior Department said they don’t comment on pending litigation.

The decision comes as a result of a lawsuit brought by a group of unions and civic groups on behalf of workers fired from a host of agencies and sub-agencies.

In a charged, sometimes confrontational court hearing on Thursday, Judge Alsup challenged the government’s argument that OPM, which acts as the government’s HR department, had not directly ordered the termination of probationary employees but had left that decision to individual federal agencies and served merely as a coordinating body.

The court does not agree with the government’s attempt to use these press releases to say that the agency heads made a decision without any direction from OPM.

You won’t bring the people in to be cross-examined. “You’re afraid to do that because you know cross-examination would show the truth,” Alsup told OPM’s legal team. I sometimes doubt that you’re telling the truth.

VoteVets Action Fund is a part of the lawsuit. The chair is a retired Major General, and he said that the ruling was a win for the veterans who rely on federal employment for stability.

The same judge issued a temporary restraining order earlier this month, saying the firings were illegal, but noted that many federal agencies have yet to rehire workers. “Maybe that’s why we need an injunction that tells them to rehire them,” he said Thursday.

NPR’s James Bredar Ordered to Restrain Federal Probable Employees Through Illegal Rifs and a Republican Attorney General Appellates

Do you want to share information about pending changes in the federal government? NPR’s Chris Arnold can be reached at [email protected] or contacted through encrypted communications on Signal at ChrisArnold.07. Emily Feng works for NPR and can be reached at [email protected].

U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar, an Obama appointee, issued a 14-day stay in a case brought by 20 Democratic attorneys general representing the District of Columbia, Maryland, and 18 other states.

“Lacking the notice to which they were entitled, the States weren’t ready for the impact of so many unemployed people. They are trying to catch up. He explained in his Memorandum that they remain impaired in meeting their legal obligations to their citizens.

He ordered 18 federal agencies to reinstate probationary workers fired through what he called “illegal RIFs” by Monday at 1 p.m. Eastern daylight time, for a period of 14 days.

The Departments of Health and Human Services, Education,Transportation, and Homeland Security are included in a large list of agencies not covered by other rulings.

The Defense Department, the Office of Personnel Management and the National Archives and Records Administration were excluded from his order because they didn’t have enough evidence of illegal firings.

Under federal law, states are required to have rapid response teams to provide workers impacted by mass layoffs with support, including job transition services. The goal of these teams is to reduce fired employees’ reliance on public assistance.

The attorneys general wrote in their complaint that economic dislocations can cause a cascade of instability.

When states fired people, they said advance notice would have helped them find those in need of help. Instead, they said, they’ve been forced to expend extra resources trying to track down those terminated, and meanwhile have seen unemployment claims soar.

The lawyer for the government argued that the states aren’t injured, and that the effects of the layoffs on the states would be downstream.

But in court on Wednesday, Bredar challenged that position, noting that unlike unions representing federal employees, the states have their own interests and their own harms when a large employer suddenly lays off thousands of employees.

The government has the right to move people out of federal employment quickly but they can’t break the law while doing so.

“If the Government wants to pursue RIF, they need to start from the beginning, acting in compliance with federal law,” he wrote.

Source: A 2nd judge orders thousands of fired federal employees temporarily reinstated

The White House is Not the First Choice of the Executive Branch: Layoffs across the Depth of the U.S. Department of Education

The White House press secretary said that a single judge was attempting to take the power of hiring and firing from the executive branch. “The President has the authority to exercise the power of the entire executive branch – singular district court judges cannot abuse the power of the entire judiciary to thwart the President’s agenda. If a federal district court judge would like executive powers, they can try and run for President themselves.”

The Department of Education announced Tuesday it was going to be cutting over 1,300 positions, as part of a deeper cut across the federal workforce.

The Maryland attorney general’s office declined to comment on whether it had received advanced notice of any of the mass layoffs newly announced by the Trump administration.