Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, SUPREME COURT NEWS—High Court stays preliminary injunction reinstating fired federal probationary employees, (Apr 9, 2025)

By Brandi O. Brown, J.D.

The district court’s order was stayed pending disposition of the government’s appeal to the Ninth Circuit.

Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court stepped into the fray in ongoing litigation regarding the Trump administration’s efforts to fire thousands of probationary federal workers, issuing an order in a pending emergency application filed by OPM and other members of the administration, seeking a stay of a preliminary injunction entered by a federal district court, which would have seen the employees reinstated.

Reinstatement order. On March 13, 2025, Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California had ordered the Trump administration to offer reinstatement to thousands of probationary employees who were terminated in recent reductions in force at 19 federal agencies, following a complaint brought by the American Federation of Government Employees and other unions.

The Trump administration appealed the court’s order to the Ninth Circuit, which in an unpublished order issued on March 17, 2025, denied the request for an administrative stay. One week later, on March 24, 2025, the Trump administration requested that the U.S. Supreme Court immediately stay the preliminary injunction. On the same day, Judge Alsup issued two more orders on the underlying case. On March 26, the Ninth Circuit denied an emergency motion to stay the district court’s preliminary injunction, and on the same day the plaintiffs moved the district court to compel the government’s compliance with the preliminary injunction or to hold the government defendants in contempt.

Stay granted. Now, the U.S. Supreme Court, following Justice Kagan’s presentation and referral of the application to the Court, has granted the application and stayed the March 13, 2025, preliminary injunction “pending the disposition of the appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari, if such a writ is timely sought.” “Should certiorari be denied,” the order explains, “this stay shall terminate automatically. In the event certiorari is granted, the stay shall terminate upon the sending down of the judgment of this Court.”

Rather than stop there, however, the order list includes the following statement:

“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. See, e.g., Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l USA, 568 U. S. 398 (2013). This order does not address the claims of the other plaintiffs, which did not form the basis of the District Court’s preliminary injunction.”

Justices not in agreement. Justice Sotomayor indicated she would have denied the application. Justice Jackson indicated that she “would have declined to reach the standing question in the context of an application for emergency relief where the issue is pending in the lower courts and the applicants have not demonstrated urgency in the form of interim irreparable harm.” She would have denied the application.

The application is docket No. 24A904; the Ninth Circuit docket is No. 25-1677; the district court docket is No. 3:25-cv-01780.

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