Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, LITIGATION NEWS, TRENDS—Trump administration applies to Supreme Court for stay to avoid reinstating federal workers, (Mar 25, 2025)
Organizations Mentioned:Office of Personnel Management
By Brandi O. Brown, J.D.
The application, submitted to Justice Kagan, seeks a stay of the preliminary injunction issued by the federal district court.
On Monday, the Trump Administration applied to the U.S. Supreme Court for a stay in litigation over its termination of probationary employees at 19 federal agencies. Below, the federal district court had granted a preliminary injunction ordering the reinstatement of probationary employees who were fired from the agencies and the Ninth Circuit denied the administration’s motion for an emergency stay.
Alsup’s ruling. Initially ruling from the bench on March 13, 2025, but then following up with a written order, California federal district court Judge William Alsup, in a case brought by public and private sector unions, ordered the Trump administration to offer reinstatement to thousands of probationary employees who were terminated in reductions in force at 19 federal agencies. Rejecting DOJ’s assertion that OPM merely issued “guidance” to the agencies, which then led to the layoffs at issue, Judge Alsup pronounced from the bench: “The court finds that Office of Personnel Management did direct all agencies to terminate probationary employees with the exception of mission critical employees.” The judge thus ordered the employees’ immediate reinstatement.
In his follow-up written order, Judge Alsup noted evidence that OPM had not only directed other agencies to fire their probationary employees, but also directed the agencies to fire the employees under the pretense of “performance.” Indeed, there was evidence that OPM disseminated a template termination letter to the agencies with text stating “The Agency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the Agency would be in the public interest. For this reason, the Agency informs you that the Agency is removing you from your position of [TITLE] with the Agency and the federal civil service effective [insert date and time, if necessary.]
Ninth Circuit’s denial. The administration appealed and also sought an emergency stay from the Ninth Circuit, filed on the same day as the district court hearing, but it was denied. The appeals court, in an unpublished order issued a few days later, explained that an administrative stay of the district court’s order, rather than preserving the status quo, “would disrupt the status quo and turn it on its head.” Judge Bade dissented, arguing that granting the stay would allow the court to rule on the motion for a stay pending appeal “without potentially subjecting the government and the terminated employees to whiplash caused by diverging downstream decisions.”
“Hijack[ed]” by “third parties.” Ironically, given that the underlying lawsuit contends that OPM—without authority to do so—had directed other agencies to fire their employees, in its motion the Trump administration argues that the court’s preliminary injunction “let third parties hijack the employment relationship between the federal government and its workforce.”
They contend that the respondents are “nonprofit organizations whose members use government services that have, at best, only distant connections to the terminated employees. Yet they have now parlayed such alleged harms as the late opening of a national park’s bathroom facility or supposedly dilatory Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) responses into a sweeping, nationwide preliminary injunction ordering six federal agencies to immediately reinstate, to full duty status, more than 16,000 terminated probationary employees.”
They contend that the injunction is causing “ongoing, irreparable harm” warranting the High Court’s intervention. “Every day the government remains subject to the injunction inflicts intolerable harm on the functioning of the Executive Branch.”
The application is Docket No. 24A904.
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