The Supreme Court on Tuesday reversed the reinstatements of thousands of federal employees the Trump administration has sought to fire, dealing a blow to the workers and groups challenging one of the administration’s key efforts to upend the civil service.
Most of the 16,000 employees impacted by the court’s decision are—for now—still protected under a separate injunction issued by a Maryland-based federal judge, whose ruling is separate from the one that made its way to the high court. The Supreme Court ruled that the allegations of the non-profit groups that brought the case were insufficient to establish standing. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson noted that they would have denied the request for a stay.
The Trump administration sought emergency intervention from the Supreme Court after U.S. District Judge William Alsup in California reversed the firings of federal employees in their probationary periods—typically those hired in the last one or two years—at the departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior and Treasury. It first sought an emergency stay before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, but the court denied the request.
In his decision, Alsup had made clear the Trump administration, like any other, can engage in mass reductions of the federal workforce, but it must do so by following federal statutes and the Constitution. The Office of Personnel Management directed agencies to carry out the firings, the judge concluded, which he said circumvented those established procedures.
The administration has argued federal employees must take their disputes over personnel actions to the proper channels as provided in civil service law, such as the Merit Systems Protection Board. It also stated the ..
Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.
