A federal judge in Maryland on Tuesday ordered the Trump administration to stop firing probationary employees who live or work in 19 states and the District of Columbia while a legal challenge to the mass terminations makes its way through the courts.
In his order, Judge James K. Bredar, of the Federal District Court in Maryland, narrowed the scope of an earlier, temporary pause that applied nationwide and led to the reinstatement of nearly 24,000 federal probationary employees fired in February. It was not immediately clear how many of those employees would no longer be covered by Tuesday’s order and therefore at risk of being fired again.
The uncertainty around what Judge Bredar’s order means for some of these reinstated employees is the latest example of the chaos caused by the Trump administration’s move to fire workers with probationary status en masse. Officials targeted probationary employees because they have fewer civil service protections than workers who have been in their positions longer. Their layoffs were the first major actions taken to enact President Trump’s plans to gut the federal work force.
Last month, 19 states and the District of Columbia sued the federal government over the mass firings, arguing that the actions amounted to a reduction in force, a formal reorganization process that demands the government follow specific steps. One such step is that the government must give states a heads-up whenever it plans to fire 50 employees in a certain area. The states argued that without these notifications, they were left to face spikes in unemployment without warning.
While the states argued that a pause in firings should be nationwide, Judge Bredar said he chose to apply it only to those who live or work in the jurisdictions that sued, wary of criticisms of district judges who issue nationwide orders to curb executive branch actions.
The Trump administration appealed the previous temporary order, and is likely to appeal the longer-term injunction issued on Tuesday.
In his order on Tuesday, Judge Bredar added the Office of Personnel Management and the Defense Department to the list of more than a dozen federal agencies he previously said likely broke the law when they fired thousands of workers without following proper procedure.
But the case before Judge Bredar has taken on new significance as it is the first legal challenge to the next frontier of massive cuts to the federal work force, already underway.
Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services announced it would cut 10,000 jobs. Early Tuesday morning, those layoffs began rolling out, in some cases eviscerating entire offices.
Combined with earlier buyouts and retirements, the Health and Human Services Department will be left with 62,000 employees, down from around 82,000. Agencies face an April 14 deadline to present details of which employees will be cut in order to comply with Mr. Trump’s government-shrinking objective.
Federal labor unions have also sued the Trump administration over the probationary firings in the Northern District of California. The judge overseeing that case, William H. Alsup, ordered that the administration hold off on further probationary firings. The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to reverse the order.
In addition, last month, the Merit Systems Protection Board, an administrative body that handles federal worker disputes, ordered that thousands of fired probationary workers be temporarily reinstated because the federal government likely violated the law in the process.