Agencies that fired 25,000 federal workers comply with court-ordered reinstatements

Several federal agencies responsible for terminating nearly 25,000 federal probationary status workers told a federal court Monday evening that they’re complying with an order to reinstate those employees, giving thousands of people their jobs back for the time being.

According to a status report and corresponding declarations filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, 18 federal agencies and their subcomponents said they were working to reinstate their fired probationary employees following the court order. Most of those agencies said those workers would be placed on administrative leave.

While the court order doesn’t cover all fired probationary workers, the declarations in the case offer one of the first clear windows into the breadth of firings under President Donald Trump. Per figures in those declarations, the agencies initially terminated 24,813 probationary workers. Of that total, 15,499 were offered reinstatement as a direct result of the court’s order.

An additional 5,925 employees, at least, were previously offered reinstatement by those respective agencies before the court’s order. That includes the 5,714 terminated employees in the U.S. Department of Agriculture who got their jobs back for 45 days as the result of a ruling by a quasi-judicial body within the executive branch known as the Merit Systems Protection Board. 

A more detailed version of the chart below with descriptions of each figure can be found here.

The government’s status report on compliance and agency declarations are the latest in a legal challenge to the firings filed by a coalition of states being led by Maryland. On March 13, Judge James K. Bredar of the District Court of Maryland granted a request by the states for a temporary restraining order, which required the 18 impacted agencies to reinstate fired probationary workers by Monday at 1 p.m. Eastern. 

In a memorandum accompanying the order, Bredar said that the government’s actions showed that the terminations were reductions in force, or RIFs, rather than firings based on performance as the government stated. As such, the government should have followed RIF procedures, which includes providing notice to states when a RIF involves at least 50 employees in a “competitive area.”

Bredar’s ruling applies to the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, Transportation, Treasury, Veterans Affairs, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, General Services Administration, Small Business Administration, and U.S. Agency for International Development.

The government has appealed that ruling to the Fourth Circuit.

According to a letter sent to fired National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration employees Monday that FedScoop viewed, workers at the agency will be reinstated “and placed in a paid, non-duty status until” the litigation is resolved or the department takes other administrative employment action. That correspondence was sent by John Guenther, the Department of Commerce’s acting general counsel.

NOAA terminated roughly 650 probationary workers in late February, according to a spokesman for Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md. Former NOAA workers, advocates and lawmakers criticized those terminations, arguing that they could disrupt important services the agency provides, such as sending severe weather alerts, providing data for local forecasts, and tracking hurricanes.

A NOAA spokesman referred requests to comment on the letter to the Department of Commerce, which didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Separate reinstatement ruling stands

The reinstatements also came as an appeals court denied a request by the Trump administration to halt a separate district court ruling that requires six agencies to offer reinstatement to fired probationary workers.

That decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit lets the lower court ruling by a San Francisco-based federal judge stand while the appeal moves forward. In denying the government’s request, two of the judges on a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit wrote that staying the district court order would “disrupt the status quo and turn it on its head.”

Voting to deny the request were Judges Barry Silverman and Ana de Alba. Judge Bridget Bade partially dissented and said she would have granted a limited administrative stay. Doing so, she argued, would preserve that status quo and prevent the government and workers from potential “whiplash caused by diverging downstream decisions.”

The denial is the latest in a legal challenge brought by federal worker unions and other organizations against the mass terminations of probationary workers in the federal government. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleged that the Office of Personnel Management unlawfully exceeded its authority in ordering other agencies to fire their workers. 

While the government challenged that allegation, arguing OPM didn’t direct agencies to terminate workers and only provided them with guidance, Judge William Alsup sided with the plaintiffs and has issued temporary restraining orders halting and reversing the terminations at certain agencies. In his second order on March 13, he required six agencies to reinstate workers. Those agencies were the VA, USDA, DOE, Interior, Treasury and the Department of Defense.