Two federal judges have ordered the reinstatement of tens of thousands of federal workers who were fired during their probationary period under orders from the Trump administration.
The first decision came March 13, when California U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup ruled that the firings were unlawful because they were ordered by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which had no legal authority to order federal agencies to fire probationary employees. His ruling applies to workers in the Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Interior, Energy, Defense, and Treasury departments. Alsup also took aim at the dishonesty of the firings: Workers were told in standardized language that they were being fired for performance, but without any documentation of performance issues, and many of the fired workers were exemplary employees.
“It’s a sad, sad day when our government would fire a good employee and say it’s based on performance when they know good and well that is based on a lie,” Alsup said.
Alsup’s ruling forbids OPM from giving any future guidance to federal agencies on which employees should be terminated. The Trump administration is appealing the ruling to the court of appeals.
Later the same day, a U.S. Circuit Court judge in Maryland ordered the administration to temporarily reinstate fired probationary employees at 18 federal agencies while a lawsuit by state attorneys general is being heard in his court, and halt its planned reductions in force, which the judge found were not in accordance with the regulations governing layoffs.
But it’s not clear the administration is fully complying with the reinstatement orders. Multiple federal agencies have notified fired probationary employees that they’re reinstated but are on paid administrative leave for now, rather than returning to their jobs.
One of them is Isabella Isaksen, a Bend, Oregon, employee of the U.S. Forest Service who was U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley’s guest when President Donald Trump addressed Congress March 4. Isaksen represented the United States in the pentathlon event at the 2016 Olympics and after that served in the U.S. Army. On Feb. 16, Isaksen was fired from her job as a public affairs officer for Ochoco National Forest after just under 11 months on the job. She was one of about two dozen employees laid off at her workplace.
“While I worked for the government, I served the American people,” Isaksen said at a March 17 town hall event at a Northeast Portland federal office building. The listening session featured almost all of Oregon’s congressional delegation: Democrats Ron Wyden, Jeff Merkley, Suzanne Bonamici, Val Hoyle, Andrea Salinas, and Maxine Dexter. Close to 250 federal employees attended.
“As an American, I am deeply concerned,” Isaksen said, “not just for the immediate consequences, but for what this means for our country, for who we choose to be.”
