Nonprofits urge the justices to uphold the reinstatement of federal employees by the judge.
EMERGENCY DOCKET
The Court could rule on Office of Personnel Management V. American Federation of Government Employees anytime. (Aashish Kiphayet via Shutterstock)
A group of nonprofits challenging the layoffs of thousands of probationary employees urged the Supreme Court to leave in place an order by a federal judge in San Francisco that would require the federal government to reinstate more than 16,000 employees who were fired by six agencies in February. In a 40-page document, the group said that it was difficult to believe that returning employees to their jobs would cause irreparable damage to the government. “These employees had the same workplaces and credentials, benefits and training only a few weeks before.” The term probationary employee is not limited to new federal employees or those who have just joined the workforce. It can also refer to experienced federal workers who are transferring to a different role. In February, the Trump administration fired tens of thousands of probationary employees as part of its broader effort to shrink the size of the federal workforce.
The nonprofits that contend that layoffs could lead to fewer government services, affecting their members, went to federal court on Feb. 19, arguing that the Office of Personnel Management’s actions violated several different provisions of the federal law governing administrative agencies.
The government insisted that OPM had not been responsible for any of the firings. Senior U.S. district judge William Alsup found that, based upon a “mountain of proof,” “OPM directed other departments to fire their probationary workers” under false pretenses – with the agencies citing bad performance, but OPM telling them themselves that performance ratings didn’t matter when determining who to fire. Alsup’s ruling, she contended, allows “third parties” like the groups in this case to “highjack the employment relationship between the federal government and its workforce.”
In their filing on Thursday, the groups counter that the government is wrong when it contends that the groups lack a legal right to sue, known as standing, to challenge the firings of probationary employees. The groups claim that Alsup did nothing beyond his authority when he ordered that the government reinstate fired employees. Instead, he merely “restored the status quo that existed prior to OPM’s illegal conduct, and reinstatement is a routine remedy in the fact of illegal termination.”
A federal district court in Maryland also issued an order that temporarily stopped the firings, and required the reinstatement, of probationary employees at 20 different federal agencies who live and work in the 19 states (along with the District of Columbia) that brought the case.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit rejected the government’s request to put that order on hold. The government’s efforts to comply with the district court’s order in this case, the groups suggest, establish that any burden on the government from complying with Alsup’s order to reinstate the fired probationary employees is not insurmountable.
This article was originally published at Howe on the Court.
