The Pentagon is seen in October 2021. (Robert H. Reid/Stars and Stripes)
The Trump administration has moved to reinstate at least 24,000 federal probationary employees fired in the president’s push to shrink the government, according to filings in one of two cases in which a federal judge ruled the terminations illegal.
The records filed in federal court in Maryland late Monday span 18 agencies and mark the most comprehensive accounting to date of sweeping firings in recent months, which the administration has repeatedly declined to detail.
Most of the reinstated employees were placed on paid administrative leave, according to declarations from officials at the agencies. Others were fully reinstated with pay, or reinstated without pay if they had been on unpaid leave before their termination, according to filings.
The officials asserted that offering all of the employees their jobs back would sow chaos, particularly when an appeals court might later allow the terminations to move forward. But they indicated they were nonetheless trying to comply with judicial orders.
U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar had given the Trump administration until Monday to send out the job offers to fired probationary employees and until 7 p.m. to submit a comprehensive report to the court documenting their compliance - a deadline that came just as Justice Department lawyers fought in an entirely separate immigration case in D.C. federal court over the extent to which they had to comply with a judicial order there. The administration is facing an array of legal challenges on a wide range of issues, including the ongoing effort led by Trump adviser Elon Musk to slash the federal workforce.
The Maryland ruling stemmed from a lawsuit brought by 20 Democratic attorneys general in early March alleging that the Trump administration had illegally terminated tens of thousands of probationary workers across 18 federal agencies. The states argued those firings were conducted in an opaque way that has overwhelmed state government support systems for unemployed workers and caused economic harm.
That harm would have been mitigated, the states argued, if the Trump administration had given them a 60-day notice - a warning they said in court papers is required of the federal government during mass layoffs. The lawsuit, filed by 19 states and the District of Columbia, claimed that the workers’ termination letters falsely said they were fired for performance issues when, according to lead plaintiff and Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown, “the firings were clearly part of the administration’s attempt to restructure and downsize the entire federal government.”
The states asked the judge for a temporary restraining order on March 7, which Bredar granted March 13 - giving the Trump administration a few days to effort a mass reinstatement. His ruling affects the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, Transportation, Treasury and Veterans Affairs, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, General Services Administration, Small Business Administration and USAID.
The Justice Department quickly appealed Bredar’s order on the reinstatements to the U.S. Court of the Appeals for the 4th Circuit Court, and on Monday requested the same court to issue an emergency pause. But the 4th Circuit had not yet ruled on the case as of 9:30 p.m., forcing the Trump administration to comply or risk facing sanctions from the judge.
In a separate but similar case in federal court in California, where a judge ordered probationary workers to be offered their jobs back, the Justice Department also asked for an emergency stay in an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit Court.
But on Monday, a three-judge panel with that court denied the stay by a 2-1 vote, with the majority finding that a stay “would disrupt the status quo and turn it on its head.”
The ruling means the six agencies in that case - at the Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior, Treasury and Veterans Affairs, and all of their subagencies - must continue their rehiring efforts while the appeal is pending.
In that California case, U.S. District Judge William Alsup had ruled that the mass terminations of federal workers at six agencies, carried out in February under orders from the Office of Personnel Management, were likewise illegal. Alsup was the first federal judge to order administration officials to offer jobs back those fired probationary workers, followed quickly by Bredar’s ruling in Maryland.
In the California case, Alsup said the firings ordered by OPM were invalid because the personnel office has no legal authority to set staffing levels at any federal agency. He suggested the Trump administration was trying to strip probationary workers of their appeal rights and unemployment benefits, circumventing the requirements laid out in the federal Reduction in Force Act to quickly reduce the size of government.
Alsup ordered that the mass rehiring effort at those six agencies begin immediately on Thursday, with Justice Department officials documenting their progress in reports to the court. Even if the Maryland case was stayed, his ruling would stand.
The Trump administration has for weeks questioned the right of courts to impede the president, as legal challenges to his uses of power mount. The latest tension came Monday, when James E. Boasberg, the chief judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, demanded that lawyers explain why the administration appeared to flout his Saturday evening order requiring planes deporting migrants to turn around mid-flight.
Many workers affected by the ruling welcomed the news but were nonetheless unsure about what it means over the long term as the Trump administration’s appeal plays out.
Probationary workers at the Transportation Department whose jobs had been terminated received word on Monday that they could return with back pay, though that won’t come until April. Some Food and Drug Administration staff who had also been notified on Monday that their firings had been rescinded were told that staff would remain on paid administrative leave until further notice, according to an email obtained by The Washington Post.
But many probationary workers have received no word of reinstatement. A terminated probationary employee at the Education Department, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal, said she’s heard nothing and added, “As far as I’m aware, neither have any of my terminated probationary colleagues” at her subagency.
Olek Chmura, 28, a National Park Service probationary employee who served as a custodial worker at Yosemite National Park, said he hadn’t received any communication as to whether he’d be reinstated.
“This is ridiculous,” said Chmura, who’d moved from Cleveland to California for the job. “They have been ordered by the court to do this. They were so quick to fire everybody but they’re really dragging their feet reinstating people.”
Even if Betsy Walsh, 27, is reinstated as an educator at Thomas Edison National Historic Park in New Jersey, she’s not sure she can return, since she already broke her lease after being terminated.
“At this point, I won’t be able to take my job back,” she said Tuesday as she awaited word on whether she’d be reinstated. Gregg Bafundo, a probationary Forest Service employee who was the lead wilderness ranger at the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest in Washington state before his termination, was granted a 45-day stay on his termination earlier this month. But he’s heard nothing more since the court rulings or administration moves to reinstate workers, and so the clock continues to tick for him.
“Really at the end of the day, there’s no change,” he said. “There’s been no acknowledgment of the recent ruling from the judge in San Francisco that all the firings were illegal.”
Even full reinstatement wouldn’t give him confidence that his job was secure, Bafundo said.
“I think I’ll be fired in three weeks,” Bafundo said, noting the scale of the administration’s push to slash the workforce. And so he’s hedged his bets by taking on a small consulting job.
“At the end of the day, I need to protect my own interests,” he said. “I have a mortgage to pay.” Salvador Rizzo, Lori Aratani, Rachel Roubein, Dana Hedgpeth and Hannah Natanson contributed to this report.
