A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to withdraw the orders on Thursday, urging the firing of thousands of federal workers, stating that those orders were “illegal,” suggesting layoffs would be suspended.
The decision by Judge William Alsap of the Northern District of California stopped ordering a halt to fire shots and added confusion among federal employees who rattled the recent mass shootings.
However, Justice Allsup found that the government’s HR department was above its authority when he issued a memo outlining the procedures for firing an estimated 200,000 probation workers.
The department, the Human Resources Administration, aims to guide agents, but does not order them to take action, he said. However, the agency responded by cleaning up the OPM’s notes. This was the first step in a dramatic overhaul of the federal official president, and he promised to do it with top advisor Elon Musk.
Judge Alsup’s ruling challenged the firing of thousands of probation workers in lawsuits filed by several unions, including the AFL-CIO and the Federation of US Government Employees.
Judge Alsup said the government must promptly warn agencies involved in the case, including the National Parks Bureau, the Bureau of Land Management and the National Science Foundation, of his finding that the directive is illegal. He also ordered the Pentagon to be notified despite not being a party to the lawsuit, expressing concern over news reports that shootings are imminent there.
He did not believe that the agency had the power to grant broader restraining orders requiring planned layoffs to be stopped, but he hoped that they would follow the spirit of the law based on his discovery that shootings made at the OPM’s prompting were illegal.
“I will rely on the government to do the right thing, go a little further than I ordered, and let some of these agencies know that I have taken control,” he said in a ruling from the bench.
The judge’s decision was limited to agencies and offices employing workers, represented by the union coalition that filed the suit.
Judge Alsup, appointed by President Bill Clinton, said many agency managers have shown to staff publicly and in internal memos that they have taken office notes as orders. However, he said that the agency cannot stop it from firing workers independently.
Nevertheless, the union’s coalition behind the lawsuit celebrated the verdict.
“These are rank and file workers who have joined the federal government and made changes to the community, and are simply abruptly terminated due to this administration’s negligence for federal employees and their desire to privatize their work,” Everett Kelly, national president of the U.S. Government Employees Federation, said in a statement. “The direction of OPMs for agencies engaged in indiscriminate dismissal of federal exam employees is illegal, simple and simple.”
He said he has widely viewed OPM’s actions as illegal in recent weeks, but he still pointed out that agencies that could include termination of probation workers can change personnel on their own, depending on the legitimacy of the move.
“The council gave the agency itself the authority to hire and fire,” he said.
“Agencies can slap your nose with OPM if they want, if it’s coaching,” he said. “But if it’s an order or is cast as an order, the agents may think that they have to follow despite what I’m telling them now: they don’t.”
Judge Alsup said probation workers were the “lifelines” of federal workers and moved to fire them, causing harm, robbing young workers and recent graduates of the expertise.
He also said he would set a date for the evidence hearing next month, when Charles Ezell, acting director of OPM, will be summoned to testify under oath about the memo sent by his office.
