Washington: The Trump administration admitted for the first time that it recently rejected nearly 25,000 recently hired federal workers and said it was working to restore them in court.
The document states that federal agencies are working to bring everyone back after a judge ruled that their firing could be illegal.
The documents were filed late Monday in federal court in Baltimore, Maryland, and included statements from officials of 18 agencies, all of which confirmed that the resumed probation workers were at least temporary.
The massive dismissal of part of Trump’s extensive purge of federal labor has been widely reported. However, the court application represents the government’s first comprehensive accounting of the termination.
Most agencies reported firing hundreds of workers. The filing documents show that the Ministry of Finance rejected about 7,600 people, the Ministry of Agriculture about 5,700 people and more than 3,200 people in the Ministry of Health and Human Services.
On March 13, U.S. District Court Judge James Bredar ruled that the mass dismissal of probation workers that began last month was illegal and ordered a rehabilitation until further litigation.
Instead of forbidding institutions from firing workers, the ruling criticized the way mass dismissals. The court noted that institutions should follow appropriate large-scale layoff procedures.
Probation workers currently have less than one year of service, although some are long-term federal employees.
Bredar noted in a brief order on Tuesday that the agencies “have made meaningful progress” to comply with his ruling. He ordered them to provide updates on the recovery work by Monday afternoon and said he expects “substantive compliance.”
Bredar’s ruling follows lawsuits filed by 19 Democratic states and Washington, D.C., who believes the massive dismissal will trigger a surge in unemployment claims and increase demand for state-funded social services.
Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown’s Office leads the lawsuit, and he says court documents are being reviewed.
The Trump administration has filed a ruling appeal to Breda and asked a court of appeals in Richmond, Virginia-based Richmond on Monday to suspend the order.
Former probation workers from the Department of Agriculture, Health and Human Services, the IRS and the General Services Administration department told Reuters they received an email informing them that they were returning to their full salary but asked them to place administrative leave.
A restoration trial worker at the General Services Authority, which is in charge of government real estate, said he still expects to be fired eventually. However, he acknowledged that getting both salary and benefits is short-term relief. “My family has health insurance, which gives me some runways to figure out what’s next,” he said.
San Francisco ruling
Hours before Bredar’s March 13 ruling, a federal judge in San Francisco also ordered the resumption of probation workers at six agencies, including Bredar’s ruling and five covered by the U.S. Department of Defense. The government also appealed the decision.
U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup criticized the administration’s decision to place trial employees on administrative leave instead of allowing them to return to work in a Monday order. He said this did not comply with his order to restore workers because it failed to restore government services as expected.
The U.S. Department of Justice responded to ALSUP on Tuesday, believing that taking leave is the first step towards a full recovery and that “administrative leave will not be used to comply with the recovery requirements.”
In Baltimore court filings late Monday, agency officials said they either restored all the fired employees or were doing so. They admit that bringing back such a large number of workers has caused chaos and destruction.
Officials also warned that the appeals court’s decision to overturn Breda could cause the agency to dismiss workers again, thereby making multiple changes to their employment status within weeks.
“The enormous uncertainty associated with this chaos and these administrative burdens prevent supervisors from properly managing their workforce,” U.S. Deputy Deputy Secretary of the Interior Mark Green wrote in one of the documents. “The work schedule and assignments are actually related to hearings and briefing times set by the court.”
Bredar plans to hold a hearing on March 26 to determine whether the rulings that continue to proceed should remain, a process that could take months or even longer to resolve.
