Supreme Court Allows Trump Administration to Keep Fired Federal Workers Off Payroll—For Now

The Supreme Court on Tuesday sided with the Trump administration, allowing it to keep more than 16,000 probationary federal employees off the payroll while lower courts continue to review the legality of their dismissals.

The ruling temporarily blocks a lower court decision that had ordered the government to rehire those employees. The Supreme Court didn’t rule on whether the firings were legal—it only said that the unions who challenged them didn’t have the legal standing to sue in this particular case.

The affected workers are probationary federal employees, a group with fewer job protections and easier dismissal processes. These workers generally cannot appeal their terminations unless they can show the firing was due to political bias or personal circumstances like marital status.

The Trump administration has argued that cutting probationary staff is part of a larger plan to shrink the size of the federal government.

Although this is a win for the administration, it’s not the final word. Other legal challenges are still moving through the courts, and a separate ruling from a federal judge in Maryland has already reinstated some of the affected employees.

Two liberal justices—Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson—dissented from the decision, saying the case didn’t require emergency action by the Supreme Court.