A federal judge on Thursday ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to reinstate thousands of probationary employees fired last month, including 1,000 probationary employees who were terminated from the National Park Service.
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) on Feb. 13 had ordered federal agencies across the country to terminate tens of thousands of federal employees via standardized notices, according to the case complaint, submitted last month by federal employee union groups.
San Francisco-based U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup, a Clinton appointee, halted the terminations in a Thursday ruling from the bench, the Associated Press reported.
The Trump administration appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court immediately.
Alsup issued what the local SF Gate outlet called a “scathing rebuke” of Trump’s downsizing methods and called the mass firings a violation of federal law, deploying procedural loopholes to sidestep legal protections.
The complaint emphasizes that the cuts were said to be based on employees’ performance, but disputes that that was the real reason people were fired.
The judge agreed.
“It is a sad, sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie,” said Alsup, according to the outlet. “That should not have been done in our country. It was a sham in order to avoid statutory requirements.”
Trying To ‘Seize The Power’
The White House ridiculed the ruling as “absurd and unconstitutional,” and as nitpicking agency actions that are all under the same executive.
“A single judge is attempting to unconstitutionally seize the power of hiring and firing from the Executive Branch,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement posted on X.com, formerly Twitter. “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.”
The firings stemmed from Trump’s Feb. 11 executive order implementing the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) workforce reduction effort.
Before Jan. 20, 2025, no OPM director had ever taken the position that OPM could direct agencies to fire their own employees, the complaint says.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
