Agencies Must Keep Rehiring Fired Workers During Appeal (1)

The Trump administration must continue rehiring fired federal workers at six agencies while it appeals a California federal judge’s ruling demanding the employees return to their jobs, an appeals court decided.

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit denied the government’s emergency request to pause a preliminary injunction from Judge William Alsup of the US District Court for the Northern District of California. Alsup found the Office of Personnel Management’s order to federal agency heads to fire probationary employees was likely illegal. OPM is the federal government’s HR division.

The OPM order is central to the Trump administration’s efforts to trim the federal workforce, directing agencies to fire probationary employees, which are typically new hires. The government must rehire the fired workers while the the case proceeds through the appeals process, the judges said.

Reversing Alsup’s order “would disrupt the status quo and turn it on its head,” appeals court judges Barry G. Silverman, a Clinton appointee, and Ana de Alba, a Biden appointee, wrote. Bridget S. Bade, a Trump appointee, partially dissented.

Alsup’s ruling directed the departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, Energy, Interior, Agriculture, and Treasury to rehire the employees who were laid off around Feb. 13 at the direction of the OPM.

A Maryland judge has also separately ordered 18 agencies to temporarily rehire thousands of terminated employees, dealing another judicial defeat to Trump administration efforts to shrink the federal sector. The Trump administration is appealing that decision.

A few federal agencies are placing their fired staff on administrative leave while the cases play out, rather than bringing them back to work immediately. Fired Consumer Financial Protection Bureau employees, for instance, will receive back pay from the time of their firing, but they won’t return to their jobs for now, Bloomberg Law reported.

Some workers aren’t returning to their federal jobs to avoid the whiplash of competing court rulings or future rounds of firings and layoffs.

The case is AFGE v. OPM, 9th Cir., No. 25-1677, 3/17/25.