Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, PROCEDURE—4th Cir.: States lack standing for injunction prohibiting the firing of federal probationary employees, (Sep 9, 2025)

By Todd Harrison, J.D.

“The real and direct harms were suffered not by the States, but by the terminated probationary employees, none of whom are even parties to this suit.”

Directing the district court to dismiss claims brought by several states regarding the federal government’s efforts to dismiss thousands of probationary employees, the Fourth Circuit, in a 2-1 decision, found that although the states may have suffered monetary harm as a result of the government’s action, a finding that they had suffered a judicially cognizable injury would “upend our federalist system,” and would effectively authorize the states to sue every time they experienced a modification in federal funding levels. Dissenting, Judge Benjamin argued that the states clearly have standing to challenge the process by which the government has engaged in mass firings, and the government’s depriving the states of information to which they were legally entitled is a constitutionally cognizable informational injury (State of Maryland v. USDA, Nos. 25-1248 and 25-1338 (4th Cir. Sept. 8, 2025)).

By early March, the federal government terminated at least 24,000 probationary employees. The government did not provide 60- or 30-days’ advance notice of the terminations, resulting in states experiencing sharp increases in unemployment claims and the expending of substantial resources in order to initiate the rapid response activities required under the Workforce Investment Act.

Lawsuit. On March 6, 2025, 19 states and the District of Columbia sued 21 federal agencies in the United States District Court for Maryland, alleging that the terminations of probationary employees were unlawful and had violated the statutory notice requirements for a reduction in force. The district court granted the plaintiffs’ motion for a temporary restraining order, directing the government to reinstate all affected employees. It then granted the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction.

The government promptly appealed the preliminary injunction and requested a stay pending appeal. The Fourth Circuit granted the government’s motion and requested a full briefing, which the court here now considers.

Informational injury. Addressing the matter of whether the plaintiffs alleged a cognizable and redressable injury sufficient to confer standing, the court noted that their failure to receive notice resembled a quintessential informational injury—the federal government withheld information the states had a statutory right to receive. However, to transform an informational injury-in-law into an injury-in-fact, the plaintiffs must allege a real harm with an adverse effect resulting from the failure to receive the information, explained the court.

The plaintiffs advanced two related theories of informational injury: (1) the injury was the failure to obtain the specific information mandated by the notice requirement; and (2) the injury was the preparatory time lost as a result of the failure to provide notice. The alleged downstream harms included rapid-response-related expenses incurred prior to the filing of this lawsuit, forward-looking rapid-response-related expenses, and various indirect impacts to state budgets.

Injury-in-fact? “None of these categories provides a sufficient basis to find a cognizable injury-in-fact,” said the court. As an initial matter, continued the court, the plaintiffs cannot point to previously incurred expenses as a harm for purposes of standing in a request for a preliminary injunction, noting that prospective relief must be justified by prospective injury. Thus, with regard to the rapid response programs, the court focused only on the allegedly ongoing and forward-looking expenses at the time the plaintiffs filed their complaint. In doing so, the court looked at whether these harms have a close relationship to a harm traditionally recognized as providing a basis for a lawsuit.

“While monetary harms generally qualify as injuries-in-fact, we cannot view the injuries of states at this high level of abstraction,” said the court. Instead, the court explained that it must consider the context in which the alleged injuries arose. Here, the court noted that it was hard to imagine a more traditionally federal function than the management of the federal workforce, and because the interest here is traditionally a federal one, the plaintiffs have no judicially cognizable injury.

“A contrary result would upend our federalist system by ceding federal sovereignty to the states,” said the court, observing that innumerable federal actions impact state budgets and programs. Under the theory advanced by the plaintiffs, continued the court, “every modification in federal funding levels would authorize states to sue in federal court,” and there would be no end to the lawsuits states could bring to contest any federal action.

Proper parties. In holding that the plaintiffs did not allege a cognizable injury, the court recognized that they were not the proper parties to bring this suit. “The real and direct harms were suffered not by the States, but by the terminated probationary employees, none of whom are even parties to this suit,” said the court, noting that while the plaintiffs may have valid practical reasons to be concerned about their citizens’ employment statuses, they may not masquerade their efforts to serve as parens patriae.

Redressability. Turning to the issue of redressability, the government contended that there was a “mismatch between the states’ informational injury theory” and the remedy of indefinite reinstatement of probationary employees, and that any remedy should have been tailored to the plaintiffs’ specific injury, namely an injunction that gave the states the information they were missing due to a lack of notice or a temporary reinstatement of 60 days to provide the states with the time they allegedly lost. The plaintiffs responded that any mismatch between injury and remedy was not related to standing but would instead be an error on the merits as to the scope of relief granted by the district court.

Here, the Fourth Circuit found that the broad remedy issued by the district court presented a redressability problem, noting that this was not because that was what the district court had ordered, but because that was the relief the plaintiffs had requested in their complaint. The plaintiffs’ requested equitable remedy primarily served to vindicate the rights and interests of the non-party probationary employees, observed the court, creating a fatal disconnect between the alleged injury and the sweeping relief that was requested.

Finding it was unable to construe the plaintiffs’ requested relief and ultimate goal in this case as anything other than an attempt to invoke federal court’s jurisdiction to restrain the federal government from terminating its probationary employees unless it fully complies with all applicable employment statutes and regulations, the court noted that this was a far cry from a narrow order that the agencies comply with the 60-day notice provision applicable to the plaintiffs presently before the court. The plaintiffs’ requested relief was ultimately aimed at vindicating the rights of the non-party employees, said the court, and the proper parties to vindicate the rights of employees under federal employment law are the employees themselves, not state governments on their behalf.

CSRA. Finally, the Fourth Circuit explained that the federal court in this case lacked the affirmative power to manage the federal government’s workforce at the behest of state governments. The Civil Service Reform Act’s scheme further supported the court’s finding on redressability, with the court noting that Congress had established a comprehensive system for reviewing personnel action taken against federal employees, entitling employees to a hearing before the MSPB and judicial review in the federal circuit. Indeed, the court found that the CSRA scheme explains why not a single individual employee is themself a plaintiff in this case. Accordingly, the Fourth Circuit vacated the judgment of the district court and remanded with directions to dismiss the action.

Dissent. In a dissent, Judge Benjamin argued that she would have left the preliminary injunction intact, contending that the majority ignored the real harms asserted by the plaintiffs and that they clearly have standing to challenge the process by which the government has engaged in mass firings. The government failed to provide the states with 60-days’ notice, thus depriving them of information to which they were legally entitled and satisfying the first requirement of a constitutionally cognizable informational injury. Further, the denial of this notice has and will continue to cause real harm with significant adverse effects, which plainly satisfies the concreteness requirement and provides the necessary grounds for Article III standing, said the judge.

As to redressability, the dissent agreed with the district court that the States can only receive relief for the harms inflicted on them with “adequate notice followed by forbearance—no more terminations until all legally mandated procedures, including passage of the requisite period of time, have been satisfied.” At no point did the states ask for more than they needed, said the judge.

The case is Nos. 25-1248 and 25-1338.

Judge: Wilkinson, J.

Attorneys: Anthony G. Brown, Office of the Attorney General, for State of Maryland. Keith Ellison, Office of the Attorney General, for State of Minnesota. Anne A. Deng, Office of the Attorney General, for District of Columbia. Courtney Lynn Dixon, U.S. Department of Justice, for U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Department of Commerce, Brooke Rollins, Howard Lutnick, U.S. Department of Defense, Pete Hegseth, U.S. Department of Education, U.S. Department of Energy and Linda McMahon.

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