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U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a joint press conference with Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer in the East Room at the White House Thursday, Feb. 27, 2025, in Washington (Carl Court/Pool Photo via AP).
A federal judge in California on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to rescind a directive from the Office of Personnel and Management (OPM) calling for the mass firing of thousands of federal government workers still in the probationary period of their employment.
Probationary employees have typically been in their current roles for less than one year, though they could be career civil servants who have been promoted or transferred.
In a ruling from the bench, U.S. District Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California sided with the coalition of labor unions that sued the government, reasoning that the administration’s effort to drastically slash its workforce was likely unlawful. The court ordered OPM to notify multiple agencies that it lacked the authority to order the terminations.
“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, according to a courtroom report from the Government Executive, adding that he believed the firings to be “illegal.”
“It can hire its own employees, yes,” Alsup continued. “Can fire them. But it cannot order or direct some other agency to do so.”
The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed earlier this month by five labor unions and five nonprofit organizations challenging OPM and its acting director, Charles Ezel. The 34-page complaint seeking a temporary restraining order (TRO) stemmed from Ezell supposedly ordering federal agencies across the country to terminate thousands of employees “by sending them standardized notices of termination, drafted by OPM, that falsely state that the terminations are for performance reasons.”
“But Congress, not OPM, controls and authorizes federal employment and related spending by the federal administrative agencies, and Congress has determined that each agency is responsible for managing its own employees,” the complaint stated. “OPM lacks the constitutional, statutory, or regulatory authority to order federal agencies to terminate employees in this fashion that Congress has authorized those agencies to hire and manage, and certainly has no authority to require agencies to perpetrate a massive fraud on the federal workforce by lying about federal workers’ ‘performance,’ to detriment of those workers, their families, and all those in the public and private sectors who rely upon those workers for important services.”
The government opposed the TRO, asserting that the plaintiffs had to pursue their claims through the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) and the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB). The administration further argued that a TRO would ” interfere with the President’s ability to manage, shape, and streamline the federal workforce to more closely reflect policy preferences and the needs of the American public.”
During Thursday’s hearing, attorneys for the government said OPM did not directly order other agencies to fire the probationary employees, rather, OPM requested that agencies review their probationary workers and make determinations on their fitness to continue their employment, according to a report from CBS News.
Alsup stopped short of ordering the government to reinstate employees who had already been terminated, Politico reported. And while the court halted future firings allegedly directed by OPM, he reportedly conceded that he could not prevent individual agencies from firing their own employees.
“How could so much of the workforce be amputated suddenly overnight?” the judge asked rhetorically, per the report. “It’s so irregular and so widespread and so aberrant from the history of our country. How could that all happen? Each agency decided on its own to do something so aberrational? I don’t believe it. I believe they were ordered to do so. That’s the way the evidence points.”
The judge reportedly also urged the Pentagon to reconsider the mass dismissals anticipated to occur on Friday, referring to probationary workers as the “lifeblood of our government.” As the suit continues to unfold, Alsup said the court will be requiring Ezell to testify under oath sometime next month.
“We know this decision is just a first step, but it gives federal employees a respite,” AFSCME President Lee Saunders said in a statement following the hearing. “While they work to protect public health and safety, federal workers have faced constant harassment from unelected billionaires and anti-union extremists whose only goal is to give themselves massive tax breaks at the expense of working people. We will continue to move this case forward with our partners until federal workers are protected against these baseless terminations.”