Washington — The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, April 8, 2025, halted a lower court ruling that required six federal agencies to rehire more than 16,000 probationary employees who were recently dismissed.
The decision came in response to an emergency request from the Trump administration, which is pursuing a broader plan to significantly reduce the size of the federal workforce. In an unsigned order, the Court said the earlier injunction from a district court in mid-March was based only on claims made by nine nonprofit organizations. The justices concluded that these claims were “presently insufficient to support the organizations’” legal standing.
The stay will remain in effect while the legal case proceeds. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, saying they would have denied the government’s request.
The probationary workers—typically in their first year or two of federal service—were the first targets of President Trump’s initiative to cut the federal workforce. Many of them were left in a state of uncertainty after being fired in mid-February, then briefly reinstated by court orders.
Labor unions and nonprofit groups, which filed the lawsuit, pledged to continue defending the workers.
“There is no doubt that thousands of public service employees were unlawfully fired in an effort to cripple federal agencies and their crucial programs that serve millions of Americans every day,” the coalition said in a statement. “Today’s order by the U.S. Supreme Court is deeply disappointing but is only a momentary pause in our efforts to enforce the trial court’s orders and hold the federal government accountable.”
The legal challenge began after thousands of workers received termination letters citing individual performance. However, the workers argued in court that many had positive performance reviews.
In response, labor unions and nonprofits sued in federal district court in California, claiming the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) exceeded its authority by directing agencies to fire these employees.
In February, U.S. District Judge William Alsup issued a temporary restraining order, calling the OPM guidance “illegal” and likely in violation of federal employment laws. Soon after, OPM’s acting director, Charles Ezell, issued a revised directive saying the agency was not instructing agencies to take any specific action on probationary employees.
Following a court hearing, Judge Alsup ordered six federal departments—the Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs—to reinstate the fired workers immediately.
Agency HR departments told the court they complied by placing the employees on administrative leave, then returning them to full-duty status.
The Justice Department appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to stop the reinstatements while the case continued, but the court declined. That led to the administration’s emergency appeal to the Supreme Court.
Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris, representing the federal government before the high court, argued the district court overstepped its authority by forcing agencies to rehire thousands of workers.
“An order directing reinstatement of thousands of employees across six agencies is intolerable,” Harris wrote. “The injunction appears to prevent the agencies from terminating the employees based on an exercise of the agencies’ independent judgment—and would even seem to prevent the employees’ termination based on newly arising grounds like new instances of poor performance or misconduct without, at a minimum, obtaining permission from the district court.”
Harris said the judge’s order was a “profound invasion” of the executive branch’s internal operations. She also noted the logistical burden and high financial cost of reinstating and paying the terminated employees, especially if the government ultimately wins the case and those payments become non-recoverable.
“Each day the preliminary injunction remains in effect subjects the Executive Branch to judicial micromanagement of its day-to-day operations,” she said.
In response, lawyers for the unions and nonprofit organizations argued that any difficulties the government now faces are self-inflicted.
“While the government complains that the reinstatement of more than 16,000 employees at the six covered agencies is an ‘enormous’ task that would interfere with agency functioning (without presenting evidence supporting that assertion), the scale of the task is simply a reflection of the scale of the Government’s own unlawful action and its ‘move fast and break things’ ethos,” they wrote.
They described OPM’s original guidance as “hasty and sloppy” and argued that the government can still fire employees—but must follow legal procedures.
“The district court’s reinstatement merely orders the government to return to the situation that existed before it embarked on illegal mass termination of probationary employees,” the challengers’ legal team added. “If there are ‘practical burdens’ associated with the return to the status quo, they are of the government’s own making.”
This is one of two lawsuits challenging the mass firings. In a separate case, 19 states sued the federal government in Maryland, and a judge there also ordered reinstatement of probationary workers at more than a dozen agencies.
In early April, the Maryland judge issued a preliminary injunction that applies to workers in 20 agencies who live or work in the states involved in the lawsuit.
