Supreme Court Permits Termination of Probationary Federal Workers

Staying an injunction entered by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the U.S. Supreme Court permitted the firing of approximately 16,000 probationary federal employees for now in a 7-2 order issued April 8.  

What This Means for HR

The Supreme Court’s order, which allows the Trump administration to implement the terminations while litigation proceeds, does not mean the terminations were lawful. The high court did not address that issue, staying the injunction on technical grounds. 

In OPM v. AFGE, the high court said the nine nonprofit organization plaintiffs in the case did not show they had standing to bring suit. “Standing” refers to the legal right of a party to bring a case before a court, requiring a concrete, personal injury or harm. 

The brief order did not address the merits of the case. Other plaintiffs challenging the terminations may be more successful.

However, on April 9, a 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel stayed a limited preliminary injunction in a similar challenge brought by 19 states and the District of Columbia, who had sued to reinstate federal probationary workers. The Trump administration argued that the states lacked standing in this case and, pending appeal, the court was persuaded.

Background on OPM v. AFGE

In the case before the Supreme Court, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), other labor unions, and the nine nonprofits on Feb. 19 sued the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) for its role in the firings. On March 13, the judge in California ordered the Trump administration to offer the probationary employees their jobs back.  

“Courts do not have license to block federal workplace reforms at the behest of anyone who wishes to retain particular levels of general government services,” the White House responded in a brief to stay the injunction. It went to on to say, “The court should have dismissed the suit on standing grounds: respondents’ [the unions’] asserted harms involve speculative, far-downstream consequences of terminating federal employees, but Article III requires plaintiffs to identify concrete injuries traceable to specific wrongful actions.”

On March 25, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to temporarily pause the California judge’s order. It argued that the order let “third parties hijack the employment relationship between the federal government and its workforce.”

The nonprofits countered that the order had simply “restored the status quo that existed prior to OPM’s illegal conduct.”