The Trump administration’s mass firing of federal employees on probationary status was outside the law, a federal judge has found.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup said in a court opinion issued Friday that it was illegal when the Office of Personnel Management told agencies to fire their probationary employees under the false pretense that they weren’t up to the job. Terminating probationary staffers was an early move by President Donald Trump in his second term to reduce the federal payroll, but he is now under court order not to repeat it.
“That directive was unlawful. The means used to enforce terminations were also unlawful,” Alsup said in the opinion, which was filed in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California.
The decision is a win for government unions and their nonprofit allies who protested the firings and challenged them via litigation.
