By Andrew Chung
(Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court blocked on Tuesday a judge’s order for President Donald Trump’s administration to rehire thousands of fired employees, acting in one dispute over his efforts to slash the federal workforce and dismantle parts of the government.
The court put on hold San Francisco-based U.S. Judge William Alsup’s March 13 injunction requiring six federal agencies to reinstate thousands of recently hired probationary employees while litigation challenging the legality of the dismissals continues. It was the latest decision in recent days in which the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, sided with the Republican president.
Alsup’s ruling applied to probationary employees at the U.S. Departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Energy, Interior and Treasury. Probationary workers typically have less than a year of service in their current roles, though some are longtime federal employees in serving new roles.
The practical effect of the Supreme Court decision will be limited given that five agencies covered by Alsup’s decision – all but the Department of Defense – are defendants in a separate lawsuit in Maryland. In that case, a federal judge also has ordered the administration to reinstate thousands of probationary workers at 18 federal agencies, but only if they live or work in Washington, D.C., or the 19 states that sued over the mass firings.
The Supreme Court’s decision may have an immediate impact on probationary Defense Department employees and those at the five other agencies who are based in states not involved in the Maryland case.
The Pentagon has not said how many probationary employees it removed or brought back, but it said previously it was aiming to remove about 5,400 probationary civilian employees.
The Supreme Court in its brief and unsigned order said the nine non-profit organizations who were granted an injunction in response to their lawsuit lacked the legal standing to sue. The court said that its order did not address claims by other plaintiffs in the case, “which did not form the basis of the district court’s preliminary injunction.”
Liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson publicly dissented from the decision.
‘UNLAWFULLY FIRED’
A coalition of nonprofit groups and labor unions, as well as the Democratic-governed state of Washington, sued the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the agency that manages the federal civilian workforce, claiming it did not have the authority to direct firings by agencies or to falsely state they were for performance reasons.
The coalition of plaintiffs called Tuesday’s decision “deeply disappointing” but said the setback was only momentary, vowing to be “back in court tomorrow” to pursue alternative grounds for relief.
“There is no doubt that thousands of public service employees were unlawfully fired in an effort to cripple federal agencies and their crucial programs that serve millions of Americans every day,” the coalition said in a statement.
Trump and billionaire advisor Elon Musk have moved quickly to shrink the federal bureaucracy and remake the government.
Eric Engle, head of the local union chapter representing roughly 85 recently reinstated employees of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service in Parkersburg, West Virginia, expressed concern that the ruling could mean those employees will be fired again because West Virginia was not one of the 19 states that sued in the Maryland case.
“This is a nightmare for these poor people. One of them I know who works in my area literally just got back to her desk behind mine an hour prior to this announcement,” said Engle, chief steward of National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 190 and an employee of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, part of the Treasury Department.
“If the president can just ignore civil service protections and unions with the legal right to represent bargaining unit employees have no standing in court, then millions of us are already living under a dictatorship,” Engle said.
The administration had urged the Supreme Court to lift Alsup’s order, contending that the judge had overstepped his authority in directing the reinstatement of 16,000 employees.
Alsup, an appointee of Democratic former President Bill Clinton, faulted the administration for improperly terminating en masse the probationary workers and cast doubt on the justification presented by the government that the firings were the result of poor employee performance. The San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to halt Alsup’s order.
The Supreme Court on Monday let Trump pursue deportations of alleged Venezuelan gang members using a 1798 law that historically has been employed only in wartime, but with certain limits. The court on Monday also temporarily halted a judge’s order requiring the administration to return by the end of that day a Salvadoran man who the government has acknowledged was deported in error to El Salvador.
On Friday, the court let Trump’s administration proceed with millions of dollars of cuts to teacher training grants – part of his crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Additional reporting by John Kruzel and Idrees Ali in Washington, Nathan Layne in New York and Dan Wiessner in Albany; Editing by Will Dunham)
