By Daniel Wiessner
(Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court cleared the way on Wednesday for 18 federal agencies to once again fire thousands of employees who lost their jobs as part of President Donald Trump’s purge of the federal workforce but were later reinstated by a judge.
The Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the lower-court judge likely lacked the power to order probationary government employees be reinstated after finding their firings violated regulations for mass layoffs.
Probationary employees typically have less than a year of service in their current roles, though some are longtime federal workers in new jobs.
On Wednesday, a three-judge panel in a 2-1 decision stayed the lower court’s April 2 ruling, which applies to employees who live or work in Washington, D.C., and 19 states that sued over the mass firings, pending the Trump administration’s appeal.
The White House, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the office of Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown, which is leading the lawsuit, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The agencies covered by the judge’s order have said in court filings that virtually all of the fired workers were offered reinstatement and most accepted, but were temporarily placed on paid leave rather than returned to work. The judge last month said putting workers on leave was consistent with his order requiring them to be reinstated.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday paused a separate ruling by a judge in San Francisco requiring six agencies to reinstate nearly 17,000 probationary workers.
That order covers the U.S. Department of Defense, which has said that it fired about 360 people, and five agencies also involved in the Maryland lawsuit. The Supreme Court said the nonprofit groups covered by the judge’s order did not have standing to sue.
It would likely be more difficult for the Trump administration to make the same argument about the states that sued in the state of Maryland. Federal law requires agencies to give states 60 days’ notice before mass layoffs of government workers, which they did not do when they fired probationary employees in February.
Federal agencies terminated roughly 25,000 probationary employees in mid-February after the U.S. Office of Personnel Management directed them to identify probationary workers who were not essential.
The firings were part of a broader effort by Trump and billionaire Elon Musk to drastically shrink the federal bureaucracy and slash government spending, which has invited a series of legal challenges.
The states in their lawsuit say the mass firings violated the federal law requiring agencies to give them advance notice of mass layoffs, and would lead to a spike in unemployment claims and demand for social services.
The case in San Francisco, which was brought by unions, nonprofit groups and the state of Washington, alleges that the Office of Personnel Management had no power to direct other agencies to fire probationary workers.
(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Howard Goller)
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