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A second federal judge ruled Thursday that thousands of probationary employees laid off en masse by the Trump administration must be temporarily reinstated to their jobs.
The new temporary restraining order from Senior Judge James Bredar, an Obama-appointee, covers 18 agencies and will last two weeks, as a challenge to the terminations from Democratic state attorneys general moves forward.
It comes after a federal judge presiding over a separate lawsuit in California reversed mass layoffs of probationary workers, who generally have been on the job for less than a year, among a smaller list of agencies earlier Thursday, though Bredar’s legal reasoning for reinstating the employees differs from that of the California judge, Judge William Alsup.
In addition to requiring the departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Energy, Interior and Treasury to rehire the employees, as Alsup earlier ordered, Bredar’s ruling applied to several other agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services, the Environmental Protection Agency and the US Agency for International Development.
In the states’ case, filed in Baltimore’s federal court, the attorneys general argued that the administration had violated a 6-day notice requirement for so-called reductions in force – or RIFS – as well as other procedural steps for such mass terminations. The administration countered that no such notice was required for the layoffs, done quickly in early days of the administration, because federal law allows the government to terminate probationary employees under certain circumstances without any heads up.
Bredar on Thursday rejected the administration’s arguments that the terminations fit into a category not requiring notice because the employees were fired because of their substandard performance.
“Here, the terminated probationary employees were plainly not terminated for cause,” Bredar wrote in a 56-page opinion. “The sheer number of employees that were terminated in a matter of days belies any argument that these terminations were due to the employees’ individual unsatisfactory performance or conduct.”
He said that the administration’s “contention to the contrary borders on the frivolous.”
The upshot of Bredar’s ruling, as he acknowledged at a hearing Tuesday, is that the administration would be allowed to lay off the employees en masse if it went through the proper RIF procedures, including the advance notice. His ruling also noted the administration is free to fire individualized employees without following the RIF rules if they are being fired for cause, “on the basis of good-faith individualized determinations.”
In the California case, Alsup also criticized the Trump administration’s justification for firing the probationary employees, but he said he was issuing a preliminary injunction because he believes the Office of Personnel Management unlawfully directed the agencies earlier this year to conduct the layoffs.
Alsup’s ruling is one of the most significant yet in cases testing the administration’s authority to quickly reduce the number of federal employees – a key priority that has been central to the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency.
The Trump administration has been targeting probationary workers because they have fewer job protections and can be dismissed more easily. Federal probationary employees have typically been in their positions for one year, but some jobs have two-year probationary periods. The employees may be new to the federal workforce, but they also could have been recently promoted or shifted to a different agency.
This story has been updated with additional details.
CNN’s Devan Cole contributed to this report.
