Supreme Court halts order to rehire probationary workers fired by Trump

The Supreme Court on Tuesday paused an order requiring the Trump administration to rehire more than 16,000 fired probationary employees, at least a temporary victory for the president’s efforts to radically downsize the government and dismantle some agencies.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled last month that the government’s human resource agency, the Office of Personnel Management, had no legal authority to direct mass firings at the Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior, Treasury and Veterans Affairs. Most of the workers had been on the job a year or two, but some were more veteran employees.

The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that Alsup’s order, which was based on the allegations of nine nonprofit groups, was improper because the groups did not have standing to sue, meaning they did not have a direct stake in the firings so they could not bring legal action. The high court’s order did not address allegations brought by workers’ unions that are also part of the lawsuit. The fired probationary workers were not parties to the legal action.

The impact of the ruling will be somewhat limited because a federal judge in Maryland issued a similar injunction last month against the firing of many of the same workers in 19 states and the District of Columbia. The Maryland ruling remains in effect and was not part of the high court’s decision.

Most of the workers covered by Alsup’s ruling have been rehired.

Two liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented from the Supreme Court majority Tuesday and said they would have denied the government’s application to pause the rehirings while litigation continues.

“The District Court’s injunction was based solely on the allegations of the nine nonprofit-organization plaintiffs in this case. But under established law, those allegations are presently insufficient to support the organizations’ standing,” the majority wrote.

The nonprofits, which include conservation organizations such as Western Watersheds Project and economic opportunity groups such as the Main Street Alliance, argued they have standing because they will be affected by losses of government services related to the firings.

Tuesday’s decision will remain in effect until the appeal of the case is decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, based in San Francisco, and the parties decide whether to challenge that ruling at the Supreme Court.

The ruling was one of three recent emergency decisions by the Supreme Court that have handed the Trump administration modest victories related to some of the president’s major initiatives. Trump and his allies complained loudly of bias in the federal judiciary – and even called for the impeachment of some judges – after lower courts put dozens of blocks on his executive orders. The idea of impeaching judges for their rulings drew a rare public rebuke from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

On Monday, a divided high court cleared the way for the administration to use a wartime authority to deport members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, at least temporarily. The justices said deportees have to be notified of proceedings against them and given a chance to challenge them in court.

Last week, the high court allowed officials to freeze up to $65 million in teacher grants that the administration said promoted diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

The justices could rule at any time on two other Trump-related cases, dealing with his bid to end birthright citizenship and the mistaken deportation of a Maryland father who was sent to a prison in El Salvador.

In the Maryland case on worker firings that was not before the Supreme Court, a federal judge ordered the administration to rehire probationary employees fired from 20 government agencies since Jan. 20. A broad group of attorneys general from Democratic-led states across the country sued over those terminations.

Since Trump took office, his administration has terminated nearly 25,000 of the government’s roughly 200,000 probationary workers, part of a major push by the president and Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service (which stands for Department of Government Efficiency) to cut the size of the federal workforce and get rid of departments they say are wasteful.

More than 24,000 of those workers have been reinstated in some form as of last month, after federal judges in San Francisco and Maryland blocked the firings, according to the most recent government updates in both cases.

The plaintiffs in the 9th Circuit case said the Supreme Court ruling was “only a momentary pause” in their fight against the firings.

“There is no doubt that thousands of public service employees were unlawfully fired in an effort to cripple federal agencies and their crucial programs that serve millions of Americans every day,” they said in a statement. “Today’s order by the U.S. Supreme Court is deeply disappointing but is only a momentary pause in our efforts to enforce the trial court’s orders and hold the federal government accountable.”

Trump administration lawyer Sarah M. Harris told the justices that the preliminary injunction issued by Alsup had allowed “third parties [to] hijack the employment relationship between the federal government and its workforce” because the nonprofit organizations did not have standing to sue.

She added that judges nationwide had usurped the president’s authority by issuing dozens of stays on Trump’s initiatives.

“And, like many other recent orders, the court’s extraordinary reinstatement order violates the separation of powers,” Harris wrote. “That is no way to run a government.”