A federal judge in California granted a preliminary injunction to reinstate thousands of fired probationary workers at federal agencies as part of a lawsuit filed by the American Federation of Government Employees.
The ruling by the judge William H Alsup in the US district court for the northern district of California applies to fired probationary employees at the Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, Department of the Interior and the Department of the Treasury.
At least 30,000 probationary employees working for the federal government have been fired as part of the efforts of Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” to slash the federal workforce and government expenditures.
Many of the employees were fired with the cited reason being poor performance, though workers have disputed this based on positive performance evaluations.
Alsup said it was a “lie” that the probationary workers who were fired had performance issues.
“It is sad, a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie,” Alsup said in court Thursday.
Before the judge’s order, the US Department of Justice had declined to make the acting head of the office of personnel management, Charles Ezell, available to testify on the firings in court.
In an earlier ruling, Alsup said on 27 February that the firing of probationary employees was illegal because the office of personnel management had no authority to order it.
The office of personnel management updated the 20 January memo on probationary employees, which the American Federation of Government Employees argued reveals an admission it unlawfully directed the firings.
“OPM’s revision of its Jan 20 memo is a clear admission that it unlawfully directed federal agencies to carry out mass terminations of probationary employees – which aligns with Judge Alsup’s recent decision in our lawsuit challenging these illegal firings,” the union said in a statement earlier this month. “Every agency should immediately rescind these unlawful terminations and reinstate everyone who was illegally fired.”
