Supreme Court Upholds Trump Admin’s Mass Firing of Probationary Employees
The Supreme Court has sided with the Trump administration, granting an emergency administrative stay on a lower court order that had temporarily blocked the termination of thousands of probationary federal employees. The decision effectively allows the firings to move forward.
The case was brought by nine nonprofit organizations that sued the administration, seeking to reinstate the fired employees. However, the Court ruled that the plaintiffs lacked the legal standing required to pursue the case.
“The District Court’s injunction was based solely on the allegations of the nine non-profit-organization plaintiffs in this case. But under established law, those allegations are presently insufficient to support the organizations’ standing,” the court said.
Government attorneys argued in their final brief that the lower courts had overstepped their authority when they ordered the reinstatement of the probationary employees last month. Since President Donald Trump took office, the administration has terminated approximately 16,000 probationary federal workers as part of a broader effort to reduce government spending and eliminate inefficiency.
Probationary federal employees do not have the civil service protections granted to full-time career employees, making them more susceptible to termination. According to a Fox News report, the Department of Justice argued that forcing the government to rehire these individuals would cause “chaos” in federal agencies and emphasized that the terminations were due to poor performance.
In March, Chief Judge James Bredar ordered the administration to reinstate the probationary employees, directing officials to provide a list of affected workers and details on how federal agencies were complying with the reinstatement mandate.
Plaintiffs in the Supreme Court filings claimed that the administration’s “decimation” of probationary employees had caused lasting harm to various agencies and hindered their ability to function effectively. Solicitor General John Sawyer pushed back in the filing, arguing that the lower court’s injunction compelled the administration to rehire employees “despite agencies’ judgments about what best serves their missions.”
“Courts do not have license to block federal workplace reforms at the behest of anyone who wishes to retain particular levels of general government services,” the government said in its brief.
