A federal judge in California has temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to carry out mass firings of federal employees, ruling that the government overstepped its authority.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup, based in San Francisco, issued the ruling on Thursday after reviewing a lawsuit filed by multiple unions and nonprofit organizations. At the center of the case was a directive from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which called for the termination of thousands of recently hired federal workers, including 5,400 employees at the Department of Defense.
Alsup ruled that OPM does not have the power to mandate such firings, especially of probationary employees, workers who have typically been in their roles for less than a year. He ordered OPM to rescind both a January 20th memo and a February 14th email that had instructed agencies to identify probationary employees for termination.
However, because the Department of Defense and other agencies were not named defendants in the lawsuit, Alsup said he could not directly stop them from carrying out the terminations. Still, he cautioned that the mass layoffs could severely impact national parks, scientific research, and services for veterans, stating, “Probationary employees are the lifeblood of our government. They come in at a low level and work their way up. That’s how we renew ourselves.”
The Trump administration defended its directive, arguing that OPM had merely asked agencies to review their workforce and assess who could be terminated, rather than mandating any action. But Alsup remained skeptical, pointing out that it was highly unlikely that nearly every federal agency independently decided to slash its workforce all at once.
