Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, LITIGATION NEWS, TRENDS—Civil servants fired by Trump administration sue Office of Special Counsel, (Sep 11, 2025)

By Patricia K. Ruiz, J.D.

OSC is the only agency with the authority to investigate and prosecute prohibited personnel practices (PPPs) across the executive branch.

Four civil servants have filed suit against the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) and the acting director of OSC, alleging the agency violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and disregarded its statutory obligation to protect federal employees from unlawful employment actions when it reversed course on investigations into the Trump administration’s mass firings of federal probationary employees. The plaintiffs seek to compel OSC to follow Congress’s mandate to protect federal employees and preserve the federal government’s merit-based system.

OSC mandate. Under Congress’s mandate, OSC is obligated to protect federal employees from retaliation and prohibited personnel practices (PPPs), the complaint states. PPPs are employment-related activities banned in the federal workforce because they undermine the government’s statutorily mandated commitment to a non-partisan civil service premised on merit principles. These include firing or demoting employees for political reasons, punishing whistleblowers, showing favoritism, or violating merit-based hiring and firing rules. OSC’s jurisdiction, set forth by Congress, includes all covered executive branch employees—including 200,000 probationary employees, new hires, and employees moving into new positions, all of whom are undergoing a one- to two-year trial period to assess their fitness for the job.

Mass firings. The complaint states that, in February 2025, the Trump administration directed the terminations of thousands of probationary federal employees governmentwide. The firings were conducted with no individualized assessments of workers’ performance or conduct, in violation of federal regulations and core merit system principles codified in statute. More than 2,000 probationary employees filed complaints with OSC, describing how their terminations constituted PPPs. Initially, OSC agreed there was evidence of PPPs, and Senate-confirmed Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger immediately acted to investigate the firings. OSC successfully petitioned the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) to stay many of the terminations, having determined the mass probationary terminations were reductions in force (RIFs) implemented in violation of numerous statutes and regulations.

Dellinger firing; closure of investigations. Subsequently, the Trump administration fired Dellinger without cause, installing a series of political loyalists as acting special counsels, the complaint alleges. Only weeks later, OSC abruptly reversed course and abdicated its statutory duty to protect employees from partisan and unlawful actions, the complaint alleges, issuing a poorly reasoned directive explicitly reversing its position and ordering staff to close the investigations. The complaint argues that this directive was contrary to law, plainly pretextual, and arbitrary and capricious in numerous respects. The directive failed to adequately explain OSC’s stark reversal in position, ignored the reliance interests of probationary employees who filed valid complaints in good faith, and depends on a misreading of OSC’s statutory authority, the complaint argues.

Relief requested. The plaintiffs requested that the court declare the directive and associated investigation closure notices unlawful under the APA; declare that OSC’s categorical exclusion of PPP complaints based on probationary status violates its statutory mandate and is unlawful; and order OSC to reopen and investigate PPP complaints submitted by probationary employees in a manner consistent with its statutory obligations.

The case is No. 1:25-cv-03107.

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