The Supreme Court has halted an order by a superannuated, Clinton-appointed San Francisco judge that would have required the Trump administration to reinstate some 16,000 probationary employees it had fired from the Pentagon, the Treasury, and the Agriculture, Energy, Veterans Affairs, and Interior Departments. 

The order places the reinstatement on hiatus until the Supreme Court has a chance to rule on the issue, but things look grim for the Resistance. The vote was 6-2, with only hardened anti-Trumpers Sotomayor and Jackson voting to sustain the judge’s order. The court also noted that it didn’t think the plaintiffs in the case, the American Federation of Government Employees and the AFL-CIO, had standing. “The District Court’s injunction was based solely on the allegations of the nine non-profit-organization plaintiffs in this case,” said the unsigned order, “But under established law, those allegations are presently insufficient to support the organizations’ standing.”  

This case originated in March when the Office of Personnel Management issued an order directing agencies to terminate workers in term or probationary status. Somehow, this case ended up in San Francisco, which only has the most tenuous connection to any of the agencies named in the suit; see . One might suspect that judge shopping was going on. 

Judge Willam Alsup, a 79-year-old Clinton appointee, excoriated the Trump administration: “You will not bring the people in here to be cross-examined. You’re afraid to do so because you know cross-examination would reveal the truth,” the judge said to a DOJ attorney during a hearing Thursday. “I tend to doubt that you’re telling me the truth. … I’m tired of seeing you stonewall on trying to get at the truth.”

With the Supreme Court ruling that labor unions have no standing, this case seems to be effectively kaput. But never fear—it will arise again, zombie-like, in some other court.

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