Judge slams Trump DOJ for refusing to make any further effort to get at the truth in probationary firings case [View all]

Source: Law & Crime

Mar 16th, 2025, 1:22 pm


A federal judge has denied a request by the Trump administration for a stay on an order he issued last week — declaring the president’s firing of tens of thousands of probationary employees over the past two months as “unlawful” and choosing to reinstate the workers — in what he now fears could be a lost cause due to efforts by the government to “stonewall” him.

“A stay would further injure plaintiffs because reinstatement becomes more difficult with every passing day,” U.S. District Judge William Alsup, a Bill Clinton appointee, wrote on Saturday in an order denying the motion to stay from Trump’s Justice Department. “Terminated probationers are moving on with their lives, as they must,” Alsup said. “Fewer will be available to redress the harms suffered by the organizational plaintiffs tomorrow than there are today. And, the government has wholly failed to argue there is any other way to avoid the irreparable injuries flowing from the unlawful terminations except to reinstate the employees.”

On Thursday, Alsup tore into the Trump administration for its mass firings of probationary employees — calling it a “sad day” when the government would terminate “good” workers supposedly on the basis of performance knowing “good and well that’s a lie,” the judge said as he ordered agencies to “immediately” rehire those who have been booted.

DOJ lawyers filed their motion to stay Alsup’s order on Friday, saying the claims of injury by the plaintiffs are “far too speculative to support standing to maintain this lawsuit,” among other complaints about the arguments made Thursday by the five labor unions and five nonprofit organizations suing the the Office of Personnel and Management and acting OPM director Charles Ezell in California.

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