A federal appeals court has struck down a multistate lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s decision to terminate thousands of probationary federal employees, ruling that the states had no legal basis to bring the case.
In a 2-1 decision issued Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit concluded that the 19 states and the District of Columbia lacked standing to contest the large-scale layoffs. The panel sent the matter back to the federal district court with instructions to dismiss the lawsuit entirely.
Writing for the majority, Judge Harvie Wilkinson acknowledged the serious human toll of the government’s action, but emphasized that the case was not properly before the court. “We acknowledge that the abrupt and indiscriminate dismissal of the probationary employees here exacted all-too-human costs upon those affected,” Wilkinson wrote. “But this real impact on the employees, who are not parties here, cannot govern our review.”
Wilkinson further noted that while probationary workers “suffered the brunt of the harm” as a result of the firings, “they are nowhere to be found in this case.” He was joined by Judge Allison Jones Rushing, while Judge DeAndrea Gist Benjamin dissented, siding with the states’ arguments.
Probationary employees, typically those in their first one to two years of federal service, were directly impacted by the Trump administration’s effort to scale back the size of the federal government after the former president’s return to office for a second term. Beginning in mid-February, thousands of such workers received layoff notices, and by early March, court filings revealed that more than 24,000 employees had lost their jobs.
The swift and sweeping nature of the firings prompted 19 states—Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin—along with the District of Columbia, to take legal action. They argued that the administration violated federal law by failing to provide the required 60-day advance notice to states before carrying out mass layoffs that would affect their residents.
In April, a federal district court in Maryland sided with the states, ordering the reinstatement of all affected probationary workers who lived or worked within the suing states. The court also prohibited the federal government from conducting future reductions-in-force without adhering to legal notice requirements.
The Trump administration, however, quickly appealed the ruling. The Fourth Circuit granted its request to temporarily block the district court’s order, effectively allowing agencies to continue with the terminations. Oral arguments in the appeal were heard in May.
In his opinion, Wilkinson stressed that disputes over federal employment fall squarely within the domain of the federal government, not state governments. “The federal government is required in all kinds of ways to respect the basic sovereignty of the states. But the reverse is also true,” he wrote. “It is hard to imagine a more traditionally federal function than the management of the federal workforce. The federal workforce performs federal functions. How it performs them is a matter of federal concern.”
Wilkinson also warned that accepting the states’ claims would fundamentally disrupt the balance of federalism. “A contrary result would upend our federalist system by ceding federal sovereignty to the states,” he wrote, adding that such an outcome would invite a flood of lawsuits whenever states objected to changes in federal policy or funding levels.
The ruling underscores a significant setback for states seeking to intervene in federal workforce decisions. While the dissenting opinion by Judge Benjamin highlighted the potential harms to state economies and communities caused by sudden job losses, the majority maintained that only the employees themselves—or their representatives—could pursue such claims.
The decision leaves thousands of dismissed probationary workers without immediate legal recourse through this lawsuit, though it remains possible that affected employees could bring their own challenges in the future. For now, the judgment reinforces the principle that the management of federal personnel is an exclusively federal responsibility, limiting states’ ability to contest such policies in court.
