Another one.
A federal judge on Thursday evening ordered the Trump Administration to rehire approximately 20,000 probationary workers across 18 different agencies.
US District Judge James Bredar, an Obama appointee, said the Trump Administration cannot conduct massive layoffs without warning the workers.
“When the federal government terminates large numbers of its employees, including those still on probation because they were recently hired or promoted, it must follow certain rules,” the judge wrote in a 56-page order. “Some of those rules are intended to help states manage the consequences of sudden, mass layoffs.”
The judge continued, “In this case, the government conducted massive layoffs, but it gave no advance notice. If claims it wasn’t required to because, it says, it dismissed each one of these thousands of probationary employees for “performance” or other individualized reasons. On the record before the Court, this isn’t true. There were no individualized assessments of employees. They were all just fired. Collectively.”
The case was brought by 20 Democrat State Attorneys General.
New Jersey’s Democrat AG celebrated the tyranny and posted a copy of Judge Bredar’s TRO.
NEW: A judge has blocked Trump’s illegal mass firings of probationary federal employees in our case.
Time and time again, we are making clear that the President is not above the law.
We will not let him violate the law and harm our state’s residents pic.twitter.com/3uS4mJUZnY
— Attorney General Matt Platkin (@NewJerseyOAG) March 14, 2025
Excerpt from ABC News:
A federal judge temporarily paused the Trump administration’s “illegal” reductions in force and reinstated approximately 20,000 probationary government employees across 18 agencies who had been terminated.
U.S. District Judge James Bredar — an Obama appointee — concluded that the Trump administration failed to provide the legally required advanced notice before it tried to conduct “massive layoffs.” The judge also prohibited the Trump administration from conducting future mass firings without giving notice.
The ruling applies to 18 of the federal agencies named as defendants in the case except for the Defense Department, the National Archives and the Office of Personnel Management.
The decision came in a case brought by 20 Democratic attorneys general who sued last week to block the firings and is separate from a California judge’s decision also dealing with probationary employees that was issued earlier Thursday.
Earlier Thursday a federal judge out of San Francisco said the Trump Administration’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM) illegally fired thousands of probationary employees.
President Trump has fired tens of thousands of probationary workers as he works to downsize the federal government and cut waste.
US District Judge William Alsup, a Clinton appointee, ordered the Trump Administration to rehire thousands of fired probationary employees in six federal agencies.
The six government agencies include: VA, DOD, Energy, Interior, Treasury and Agriculture.
