By Andrew Chung
(Reuters) -President Donald Trump’s administration brought its bid to purge the federal workforce to the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, challenging a judge’s directive to rehire thousands of fired government employees.
The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to block a March 13 order by San Francisco-based U.S. District Judge William Alsup for six federal agencies to reinstate thousands of probationary – meaning recently hired – employees dismissed as part of Trump’s campaign to downsize and reshape the government.
The judge faulted the administration for improperly terminating en masse the probationary workers and cast doubt on the justification presented by the government that the firings were the result of poor employee performance.
The judge’s order lets the plaintiffs in the case “hijack the employment relationship between the federal government and its workforce,” the Justice Department said in its written filing.
“This court should stop the ongoing assault on the constitutional structure before further damage is wrought,” the department added.
The Justice Department said the judge’s order violates the separation of powers between co-equal branches of government delineated in the U.S. Constitution, “arrogating to a single district court the executive branch’s powers of personnel management on the flimsiest of grounds and the hastiest of timelines.”
Probationary workers typically have less than one year of service in their current roles, though some are longtime federal employees serving in new roles. They have fewer job protections than other government workers, but in general can be fired only for poor job performance.
The actions by the judge represented a significant blow for a high-profile effort by Trump and billionaire advisor Elon Musk to drastically shrink the federal bureaucracy.
Unions, nonprofit groups and the state of Washington claimed that the U.S. Office of Personnel Management exceeded its authority for the mass firings. Alsup, an appointee of Democratic former President Bill Clinton, agreed.
“It is a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie,” Alsup said at a hearing.
Alsup’s ruling applied to probationary employees at the U.S. Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, Department of Interior and the Treasury Department.
Trump, along with Musk, has moved to eliminate thousands of federal jobs, dismantle certain agencies and remove the heads of independent agencies despite congressionally authorized job protections as he seeks to remake the federal government in a second term as president that began in January.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)
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