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President Donald Trump gives remarks during an event celebrating the 2024 Stanley Cup Champion the Florida Panthers in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC on Monday, February 3, 2025 (Photo by Aaron Schwartz/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images).
An independent quasi-judicial federal board has thwarted the Trump administration’s attempt to fire six probationary government employees in the executive branch, finding there was evidence to support the claim that their terminations violated federal law. The employees were fired as part of the administration’s sweeping attempt to reduce the federal workforce.
The Merit Systems Protection Board on Tuesday granted a request from the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) to stay the terminations of the six employees for a period of 45 days while the special counsel’s office further investigates the complaints.
OSC is an independent watchdog agency primarily charged with protecting federal employees from prohibited personnel practices.
“I find that there are reasonable grounds to believe that each of the six agencies engaged in a prohibited personnel practice under [federal law],” Senate-confirmed board member Raymond A. Limon wrote in the nine-page order. “The available evidence indicates that the agencies improperly used the relators’ probationary status to accomplish RIFs [reductions in force] without affording them the substantive rights and due process to which they are entitled.”
The order came in response to six federal employees at six different agencies filing a class complaint with OSC alleging that they were fired as part of the Trump administration’s mass terminations, which they claim were “conducted with no regard for the performance or conduct of individual probationary employees,” referring to the action as “plainly unlawful.”
Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger conducted a preliminary investigation before filing a petition with the MSPB seeking implementation of the stay on Friday.
“Based on the evidence OSC has reviewed, including official directives, public statements, and the termination notices issued to Complainants, it appears that the Agencies terminated probationary employees not to eliminate poor performers but rather because of a purported lack of work, shortage of funds, and reorganization, which require use of RIF [reduction in force] procedures,” Dellinger wrote (emphasis in original). “For example, OPM directed agencies to provide lists of all probationary employees and stated that “probationary periods are an essential tool for agencies to assess employee performance and manage staffing levels.”
In his order, Limon provided an example of an employee’s performance being ignored, writing that one of the fired workers was a “100% disabled veteran” who was terminated on the same day that his supervisor commended him for his “willingness to go above and beyond.”
The firings were the result of a directive from the Office of Personnel and Management (OPM) to all federal agencies instructing them to “identify federal employees who are too early in their tenure to have civil service protections and conduct mass terminations,” according to a news release from Democracy Forward, which is representing the probationary employees in the matter.
The stay order could have wide-ranging implications for the executive branch as attorneys with Democracy Forward said they are working to expand the stay to cover all of the thousands of probationary federal employees who were allegedly “unlawfully terminated.”
“I am very grateful the MSPB has agreed to postpone these six terminations,” Dellinger said in a statement. “These stays represent a small sample of all the probationary employees who have been fired recently so our work is far from done. Agency leaders should know that OSC will continue to pursue allegations of unlawful personnel actions, which can include asking MSPB for relief for a broader group of fired probationary employees. I urge agency leaders to voluntarily and immediately rescind any and every unlawful termination of probationary employees.”
The Trump administration earlier this month attempted to oust Dellinger, who quickly challenged the termination. A federal judge ordered the administration to reinstate Dellinger and that order was upheld by a three-judge appellate court panel in a 2-1 decision. The Supreme Court last week declined to hear the administration’s case for firing Dellinger.
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