Judge slams Trump administration over 'unlawful' firings, orders to reinstate thousands of federal workers

A federal judge has ruled against the Trump administration’s mass firing of thousands of probationary federal employees, ordering their immediate reinstatement.
US District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco issued the ruling on Thursday, directing multiple federal agencies—including Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior, and Treasury—to reinstate employees terminated in mid-February. The judge stated the firings were orchestrated by a personnel office that lacked the authority to do so, news agency AP reported.
“The government has attempted to sidestep established laws and regulations for workforce reductions,” Alsup said. He condemned the move as unjust, particularly given that some employees were dismissed for alleged poor performance despite having received positive evaluations just months earlier.
“It is a sad day when our government fires good employees and falsely claims it was based on performance,” Alsup remarked.
The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed by a coalition of labor unions and organizations challenging the administration’s effort to downsize the federal workforce. There are approximately 200,000 probationary federal employees nationwide, including 15,000 in California alone, according to the lawsuit.
The White House and Department of Justice have not commented on the ruling.
Government attorneys argued that individual agencies had assessed the employees' performance before terminating them. However, Alsup found this claim dubious, noting that the acting director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), Charles Ezell, failed to appear for a court deposition.
Alsup ordered the agencies to report back within seven days, providing a list of affected employees and explaining how they complied with his reinstatement order. He also suggested the government appeal the ruling.
The plaintiffs alleged that agencies were instructed to use a standardized email template to justify the firings as performance-related, despite no case-by-case assessments being conducted. The judge’s ruling temporarily halts the administration’s attempt to bypass traditional workforce reduction procedures by targeting probationary employees, who lack the same job protections as permanent federal workers.