US Supreme Court halts reinstatement of fired federal employees

reuters.com ^ | April 8, 2025 | Andrew Chung

[ransomnote]

April 8 (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 a dispute over his effort 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.

The court in a brief, 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.

Alsup's ruling applied to probationary employees at the U.S. Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, Department of Interior and the Treasury Department.

In a separate case, a federal judge in Baltimore also ordered the administration to reinstate thousands of fired probationary workers at 18 federal agencies in 19 mostly Democratic-led states and Washington, D.C., which had sued over the mass firings.

[rktman]

Wise Latina and kadisha (wuts a womxn) Jackson brown dissented....... Shocked face——😴

[ransomnote]

Looks like I took so long to finally post this thread that someone else posted it already. Please delete.

[Dr. Franklin]

Alsup issued a nationwide order for the feds to rehire probationary workers. Judge Bredar in Maryland also initially ordered the feds to rehire workers from even more federal agencies, but then limited his preliminary injunction to workers who had their workstation in the 29 states and the District of Columbia whose AG's brought the action. SCOTUS disagrees with Alsup on the standing of the plaintiffs, non-profits, who brought the action. The states claim standing in federal court in MD because they will have to pay the fired federal employees unemployment if they are terminated. I expect SCOTUS to agree with that argument.

The issue is whether or not Trump issuing a hiring freeze on day one of his administration and then firing all of the probationary workers hired by the previous administration is a de facto reduction in force (RIF). Bredar ruled it was, and will likely be upheld on appeal. The result is that thousands of federal employees are getting paid in full while on administrative leave while all of this plays out in court. There was no cost savings in this, although it may have disrupted resistance to Trump in the federal agencies.

[dangus]

A Supreme Court ruling that said that states have the standing to sue over federal policy because of indirect effects would be bigger than DOGE. They must be desperate as all Hell! Imagine if the states had standing for every federal regulation under the notion that the regulation would cost them money!

[sauropod]

bkmk

[jpp113]

There is also another boogieman in this. If States have standing simply because they would have to pay unemployment to the fired US Govt workers, then States would also have standing to sue to stop private companies from laying off, shutting down or moving their operations. To Hades with that.

[cgbg]

There is no such animal as a “de facto RIF”.

Good luck finding it in previous legal cases.

The Supreme Court is laughing at the concept.

So am I.

Lol.

[DPMD]

I’m finding it hard to believe that Coney Barrett may have voted with the majority. Maybe if she’d been convinced that those employees were all TdA terrorists, she may have responded with more affection toward them.