US judge halts Trump administration’s calls for mass firings by agencies

SAN FRANCISCO - A California federal judge on Feb 27 temporarily blocked the Trump administration from ordering the US Department of Defence and other federal agencies to carry out the mass firings of thousands of recently hired employees.

US District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco said during a hearing that the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) lacked the power to order federal agencies to fire any workers, including probationary employees who typically have less than a year of experience.

Republican President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, who oversees the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, are spearheading an unprecedented effort to shrink the federal bureaucracy, including through job cuts.

Those efforts have resulted in a fierce pushback from Democrats, unions and federal workers, who argue the job cuts are illegal and could compromise government functions.

Already, the administration has been forced to recall some personnel in critical roles. But Mr Trump has backed Mr Musk to the hilt, and has embraced Mr Musk’s goal of slicing US$1 trillion (S$1.3 trillion) from the nation’s US$6.7 trillion budget.

Budget experts say Mr Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, is unlikely to reach his target by trimming jobs and reducing waste and fraud, and may have to slash government programmes, including benefits.

On Feb 27, hundreds of probationary workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which conducts climate science, were notified they were being let go, according to a source familiar with the situation.

Officials at NOAA did not respond to a request for comment.

At the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the head of the agency’s Transformation and Strategy Office, a group of 60 employees working on modernisation efforts, told his team on Feb 27 there was a risk the whole office would be eliminated, according to a person briefed on the matter.

Mr David Padrino, chief of the office, told his team that he planned to resign effective a week from Feb 28, the person said, adding that IRS executives have been told to brace for a “drastic” cut to headcount in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, OPM, the federal human resources agency, has instructed at least two dozen of its own employees working remotely that they must relocate to Washington to keep their jobs. They were given until March 7 to decide.

Widespread harm

In his ruling, Judge Alsup ordered OPM to rescind a Jan 20 memo and a Feb 14 e-mail directing agencies to identify probationary employees who are not “mission-critical” and terminate them.

Judge Alsup said he could not order the Defence Department itself, which is expected to fire 5,400 probationary employees on Feb 28, and other agencies not to terminate workers because they are not defendants in the lawsuit brought by several unions and non-profit groups.

But he suggested that the mass firings of federal workers that began two weeks ago would cause widespread harm, including cuts to national parks, scientific research and services for veterans.

“Probationary employees are the lifeblood of our government. They come in at a low level and work their way up. That’s how we renew ourselves,” said Judge Alsup, an appointee of Democratic former president Bill Clinton.

The White House and the US Department of Justice did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The plaintiffs in the case include the largest federal employee union, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), four other unions and non-profits whose missions include advocating for services for veterans and conservation of national parks.

‘I don’t believe it’

The Trump administration has maintained that the memo and e-mail from OPM merely asked agencies to review their probationary workforces and decide who could potentially be terminated, and did not require them to do anything else.

“An order is not usually phrased as a request,” Ms Kelsey Helland of the US Department of Justice told Judge Alsup during the hearing.

But the judge said it was unlikely that virtually every federal agency independently decided to decimate its staff.

“How could that all happen with each agency deciding on its own to do something so aberrational? I don’t believe it,” Judge Alsup said.

The judge specifically ordered OPM to communicate to the Defence Department by Feb 28 that its memo and e-mail regarding probationary employees are invalid. And it must give the same message to other agencies, including the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management, where staff cuts are likely to impact the non-profits involved in the lawsuit, Judge Alsup said.

The ruling will be in place temporarily while Judge Alsup considers the legal challenge, which claims that OPM has no power over the hiring and firing of federal employees, and that its memo and e-mail amounted to formal rules that can be adopted only through a lengthy administrative process.

Agencies began mass firings of probationary employees earlier in February.

A second wave of mass layoffs targeting career employees, including staff at OPM, began this week. A White House memo issued on Feb 26 instructed agencies to submit plans by March 13 for a “significant reduction” in staffing.

Unions have filed several other lawsuits challenging Mr Trump’s efforts to reshape the federal workforce in the month since he took office, and have already faced procedural hurdles in pursuing them. REUTERS