Updated February 27, 2025 at 20:54 PM ET
A federal judge in San Francisco says the Trump administration's firing of thousands of probationary employees is illegal and should be stopped.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup says the U.S. Office of Personnel Management must rescind directives sent to some agencies ordering them to fire their probationary employees — typically those in their first or second year in a job.
The decision came at the end of a hearing on Thursday. His order covers the Veterans Affairs Department, the National Park Service, the Small Business Administration, the Bureau of Land Management, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense and other agencies whose firings impact the civic groups that sued the Trump administration.
The temporary restraining order came in response to a lawsuit filed by a coalition that also included labor unions. The coalition's attorneys allege that the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) unlawfully ordered agencies to carry out the firings.
"Statements from officials at multiple federal agencies admit that the agencies carried out the terminations not at their own discretion, but on the direct orders of OPM," the attorneys wrote in a court filing.
Underpinning their argument is the fact that, while OPM handles many human resource functions for the federal workforce, it does not have Congressional authority to manage the employees of other agencies, a point that Alsup underscored in court.
"The agency has no authority to tell any other agency in the U.S. government who it can hire and fire, period," he said.
Government says it asked, not ordered agencies to fire employees
In court, the government's attorney argued that OPM had merely asked, not ordered, the agencies to fire probationary employees, drawing a distinction between the two.
"Asking is not ordering," Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelsey Helland argued.
As part of its court filings, the government submitted an OPM memo to human resource officers dated Feb. 14. It states, "We have asked that you separate probationary employees that you have not identified as mission-critical no later than end of the day Monday, 2/17."
Helland maintained that memo did not constitute an order.
Alsup was unconvinced.
"How could so much of the workforce be amputated suddenly overnight? It's so irregular and widespread, so aberrant in the history of the country," he said from the bench. "I believe they were directed or ordered. That's the way the evidence points."
The unions and civic groups had bolstered their case with what they called "mountains of evidence" that OPM had, in fact, ordered the agencies to fire employees.
Alsup read from that evidence, which included congressional testimony given on Tuesday by Tracey Therit, chief human capital officer for the VA.
In answer to a question from Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., about whether anyone had ordered her to carry out the terminations of approximately 1,400 probationary employees at the VA, Therit responded, "There was direction from the Office of Personnel Management."
Therit also acknowledged that while her signature was on the termination letters that employees received, "the memo was provided," although she declined to say by whom.
Judge asks government to "do the right thing"
Alsup did find merit to the government's argument that some of the plaintiffs — the labor unions — lacked standing to bring the case in federal court, and instead should have brought the case to the independent agencies that handle complaints about personnel actions within the federal government.
Therefore, the relief he ordered — a rescinding of OPM memos directing federal agencies to fire probationary employees — does not cover every agency, only those that interact with the civic groups that are plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
But Alsup made clear he believes widespread relief may be warranted.
"I'm going to count on the government to do the right thing and go further than I have ordered and to let some of these agencies know what I have ruled," he said.
He scheduled another hearing in two weeks to hear from people in key positions. They include Charles Ezell, the acting director of OPM, as well as agency leaders who were on the receiving end of his orders.
Twice from the bench, Alsup noted the importance of probationary employees, calling them "the lifeblood of our government," the bright minds who work their way up, renewing the reinventing the government.
Losing them would hurt their agencies' missions, he said.
A separate complaint over the probationary firings is winding its way through the administrative channels within the federal government. Earlier this week, the Merit Systems Protection Board ordered six fired federal employees temporarily reinstated pending further investigation of their firings by the Office of Special Counsel.
Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger is exploring ways to seek relief for a broader group of people similarly fired, his office said.
Have information you want to share about ongoing changes across the federal government? NPR's Andrea Hsu can be contacted through encrypted communications on Signal at andreahsu.08.
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