Trump administration asks Supreme Court to allow federal worker firings
The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to allow the firings of thousands of probationary workers as the president seeks to greatly shrink the size of the federal government.
A federal judge in Northern California ordered the administration to rehire about 16,000 workers at a half-dozen agencies this month after finding Trump officials had not followed proper procedures in terminating their employment.
In an emergency appeal, the administration on Monday asked the high court to block that ruling in a lawsuit brought by unions.
Acting solicitor general Sarah M. Harris wrote in her application for the stay that judges across the country had usurped the president’s authority by issuing a series of injunctions against the president’s initiatives.
Trump officials have increasingly raised that complaint in recent weeks, and President Donald Trump called for the impeachment of a federal judge who blocked officials from deporting alleged gang members using a wartime authority known as the Alien Enemies Act.
Two months into Trump’s second term, the federal courts have become one of the biggest battlegrounds over his agenda. Ousted federal workers, advocates and others have filed more than 130 lawsuits against Trump’s executive orders and other actions. Federal judges have issued about three dozen injunctions, while the administration has won favorable rulings in a little more than a dozen cases.
In the case involving the probationary workers, Harris told the justices that the preliminary injunction had allowed “third parties [to] hijack the employment relationship between the federal government and its workforce.”
“And, like many other recent orders, the court’s extraordinary reinstatement order violates the separation of powers. … That is no way to run a government,” her petition continued.
In a separate case, a federal judge in Maryland has ordered the administration to rehire probationary employees fired from 18 departments since Jan. 20.