Supreme Court halts a judge’s order to reinstate federal probationary workers

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday halted a federal judge’s ruling requiring several federal agencies to reinstate around 16,000 workers whom the Trump administration has sought to fire.

The decision to grant the administration’s request means the federal government doesn’t have to take steps to bring back some workers who were laid off while litigation moves forward before a federal judge in California.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, two of the court’s liberal justices, noted they dissented from the unsigned decision.

The order indicated that the some nonprofit groups that sued may not have legal standing to press their claims.

Further complicating matters, a judge in Maryland issued a similar ruling that applies to the same agencies at issue in the California case as well as others. That decision, which requires affected employees in 19 states and the District of Columbia to be kept on paid administrative leave while litigation continues, remains in place.

The affected agencies in the California case are the departments of Veterans Affairs, Defense, Energy, Interior, Agriculture and Treasury.

The Trump administration, in an initiative spearheaded by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, has sought to dramatically decrease the number of federal employees, sparking a fierce legal fight.

California-based U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled that fired probationary employees should be reinstated because the process used was legally flawed.

The Trump administration argued Alsup did not have the authority to reinstate the workers and made the problem worse by micromanaging the process. Lawyers also argued that the various labor unions, including the American Federation of Government Employees, and other groups that sued did not have a direct stake in the firings.

The Supreme Court decision only addressed the claims made by the nonprofit groups, as those were what Alsup’s ruling was based on. The union claims could yet lead to further court action.

No individual federal employees are involved in the lawsuit.

Alsup’s ruling “violates the separation of powers, arrogating to a single district court the Executive Branch’s powers of personnel management on the flimsiest of grounds and the hastiest of timelines,” then-acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris said in court papers.

“That is no way to run a government,” she added. 

Harris said the Maryland case is different because the judge, James Bredar, only required the workers to be put on administrative leave and did not order that they be fully onboarded. Bredar’s case is also at an earlier stage of the legal process, meaning his ruling is only provisional.

Harris noted that the Department of Agriculture is also subject to a decision issued by the Merit System Protection Board, a federal agency set up to protect federal workers, that required thousands of workers to be reinstated.

Lawyers for the challengers pointed out in court papers pointed out that the government had already said in a different filing that it has “substantially complied” with the reinstatement order, reducing the need for the Supreme Court to intervene.