The Trump administration on Monday made an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court to block a lower court order demanding that the government rehire thousands of probationary employees who were fired as part of the president’s federal bureaucracy house cleaning.
Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris said the lower court’s rulings have created “chaos” at federal agencies by micromanaging their decisions.
She asked the justices to allow the employees to remain off the books while the broader legal issues over the firings are settled.
“Each day the preliminary injunction remains in effect subjects the Executive Branch to judicial micromanagement of its day-to-day operations,” Ms. Harris told the high court.
The case has quickly turned into a marquee battle over President Trump’s aggressive agenda, going to the heart of his ability to fire federal workers en masse.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup, a Clinton appointee to the court in Northern California, has been vociferously combative with the Trump team, stopping just short of accusing them of lying to him in the proceedings.
“I tend to doubt that you’re telling me the truth,” Judge Alsup told the government in one hearing, calling the situation a “sham.”
At issue is the firings of tens of thousands of probationary employees.
Judge Alsup concluded they were fired on the orders of the Office of Personnel Management, which he said lacks that firing authority.
While OPM prodded agencies to take stock of their probationary employees and decide whom to keep on the payroll, the administration contends the actual firing decisions were made by the agencies themselves.
Probationary employees have been in their job less than a year or less than two years at some particular posts. Trump officials said they were easy targets because they hadn’t built years of experience critical to their agencies and, as probationary employees, lacked full civil service protection.
Judge Alsup ordered rehiring of employees in six departments: Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Interior, Energy, Defense and Treasury.
Another federal court has also ruled the firings were likely illegal, but that judge didn’t go as far as Judge Alsup. He has not only ordered the employees be brought back on the payroll, but that they be given their jobs back too.
The administration had planned to keep them on paid leave pending the final outcome of the case.
Unless the justices step in, agencies will have to reassign workspace, issue new credentials, sign folks up for benefits and have them undergo required onboard training — for employees whom the government argues it will eventually be able to re-fire anyway.
The Department of Justice said Judge Alsup’s intrusion also goes too far by asking for regular updates about how many employees have been brought back.
Trump officials went to the Supreme Court after failing in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which in a 2-1 ruling allowed Judge Alsup’s rehiring orders to stand.
The question before the appeals courts is what the status of the employees will be as the case is fought out.
The majority of the 9th Circuit said it made sense to rehire the employees, since that’s the position they were in before the government acted.
But U.S. District Judge Bridget S. Bade, a Trump appointee, dissented, saying the employees had already been ousted and it was the lower court order that changed the status quo. Putting that ruling on hold would actually be maintaining things as they were, Judge Bade said.
