I agree with this judge. Trump FIRED everyone for made up performance reasons. He didn’t lay anyone off. If you read closely, the Judge said Trump must abide by the clear reading of the law when laying people off. RIFs are a proper process with bump and retreat rights offered to the employees. What Trump did was illegally fire everyone, and prevented them from getting unemployment insurance because he said it was across the board for “performance.” Not only did Trump fire new employees, but he fired all recently PROMOTED employees (because when you are promoted, you start a new probationary term). He took a hatchet to the federal workforce which is specifically against the law. Trump just needs to do things by the book, that’s all.
A couple quotes from the judge...
“It’s a sad day when our government would fire an employee when they say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie”
“That should not have been done in our country. It was a sham [in order to avoid ]statutory requirements.”
The judge did not say Trump could not do a RIF.
To dig abound in the weeds of reality, the workers were Riff’ed
There was a Reduction in Force. There was actually no firing except in very specific instances.
The problem with your analysis is that the proper forum for such disputes is the Merit Systems Protection Board.
The reason it was created was to keep such disputes over federal personnel policy out of the courts.
It has resolved many thousands of such disputes over decades.
The leftists decided to skip over proper administrative procedure—and they found a judge who was good with that.
This is why the case is stupid and will fail.
Here is an article from the Los Angeles Times that explains the process:
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2025-03-13/legal-rights-federal-employees-complaints
Key quotes:
“Four federal judges in recent weeks have tossed out large lawsuits brought by unions and others representing federal employees, saying the courts lack power to block layoffs”
“The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 created an administrative agency inside the government to hear complaints from federal workers who say they have been wrongly demoted or discharged. And the Supreme Court said this agency provides the “exclusive forum” to decide those claims, not an independent federal court.”
“Citing that procedural rule, four federal judges in recent weeks have tossed out large lawsuits brought by unions and others representing employees.
Judges voiced regret but said they “lacked subject matter jurisdiction” to hear the complaints or to rule on the legality of the firings.”
“But judges are “duty-bound to decide legal issues based on even-handed application of law and precedent — no matter the identity of the litigants”
This one wackadoodle judge ignored decades of precedent and four other judge’s rulings in the past month.
This judge has committed gross judicial misconduct.
Trump has to reduce government size and scope. He also has to eliminate DEI, a particularly UN-American philosophy.
He is doing that and we should support him. RIF ..not RIF because it doesn’t meet some letter of the law?
Who cares. We are going to socialism and national bankruptcy if we don’t get a handle on it. There are so many bewildering laws that both sides could probably find some clause to support them.