A federal appeals court has cleared the way for the Trump administration to resume firing thousands of probationary government employees, lifting a lower-court judge’s order that had blocked most of the mass terminations.
A divided three-judge panel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals concluded Wednesday that the coalition of Democratic attorneys general who brought the case appeared to lack legal standing to challenge the firings.
The appeals court’s 2-1 ruling came one day after the Supreme Court lifted another judge’s order blocking the dismissal of some of the same federal workers, also on standing grounds. That leaves no remaining legal impediment, for now, to the effort by Trump administration leaders to shrink the federal workforce by summarily firing large swaths of employees across nearly 20 major federal agencies.
Judges Allison Rushing, a Donald Trump appointee, and Harvie Wilkinson, a Reagan appointee, agreed that the Democratic attorneys general lacked standing. Judge DeAndrea Benjamin, a Joe Biden appointee, dissented, arguing that the AGs had a legitimate basis to bring the lawsuit on behalf of their states.
