The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday ruled against a Trump administration request to halt a court order forcing the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to reinstate federal workers who had been fired.
This development comes amid efforts to shrink the size and scope of the government – especially in the executive branch.
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) filed a lawsuit against the administration after six federal agencies terminated probationary employees in February. The district court ruled against the administration, claiming the firings were wrongful. It issued a preliminary injunction and ordered the agencies to “immediately offer reinstatement to any and all probationary employees” who lost their jobs.
The White House sought an emergency stay, arguing that reinstating the employees would create a significant administrative burden. However, the appeals court denied the request, saying that issuing a stay on the order would “disrupt the status quo and turn it on its head.”
The government sought an emergency stay, arguing that reinstating employees would impose a significant administrative burden, but the court rejected this, emphasizing that a stay would “disrupt the status quo and turn it on its head.”
The majority decision, authored by Judges Barry Silverman and Ana de Alba, argued that keeping the district court’s order in place was necessary to maintain stability in the proceedings. They cited National Urban League v. Ross and asserted that district court’s decision was correct.
Judge Bridget Bade dissented, arguing that a temporary administrative stay on the district court’s ruling would prevent “substantial administrative burden” on federal agencies. She further noted that that having to rehire thousands of employees on such short notice would create chaos within these agencies. Moreover, the move might become moot if the Trump administration eventually won its case.
Bade also asserted that the lower court’s ruling altered the status quo rather than preserve it because the agencies had already terminated the employees.
“Plaintiffs do not contest these assertions. They argue that government services upon which they and their organizational members rely have been thrown into chaos by the terminations and that they will continue to be injured by the government’s inability to render services,” Bade wrote.
The judge further argued that the plaintiffs offered “no reason to believe that immediate offers of reinstatement would cure these harms” and that “immediately reinstating potentially thousands of employees would likely draw (already depleted) agency resources away from their designated service functions.”
This is the latest setback in the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) efforts to cut unnecessary spending while rooting out waste and fraud. DOGE has met with aggressive opposition in the battle for public opinion as well as in the courts.
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So far, at least ten lawsuits have been filed against DOGE in an attempt to prevent it from doing its work. Of particular interest is the initiative’s move to slash federal staff and access important information in various agencies to update their technological infrastructures.