The Trump administration urged the US Supreme Court Monday to stay a preliminary injunction reinstating thousands of federal employees, continuing its efforts to downsize the federal workforce.
The Trump administration opposed a federal judge in the US District Court for the Northern District of California who “reinstated the 16,000 probationary employees who had been lawfully terminated.” The Trump administration further opposed the American Federation of Government Employees, the respondents in this case. Many of the terminated employees were in their one or two-year probationary period before they were qualified to continue service.
The employees’ unions previously sought the injunction based on the constitutional law principle of Article III standing. It states that: “the plaintiff must personally have: 1) suffered some actual or threatened injury; 2) that injury can fairly be traced to the challenged action of the defendant; and 3) that the injury is likely to be redressed by a favorable decision.”
The Trump administration argued that certain activities, like National Park bathroom access or Freedom of Information Act request delays due to the downsizing of federal workers, thus creating less optimal government services, was too remote an injury to establish Article III standing. The government maintained that if the unions were right about the law, “anyone anywhere with any contact with the federal government could second-guess any agencies’ personnel decisions, down to which federal employees work which hours.”
The Trump administration also argued that the order “violated the separation of powers principles” by placing a single federal judge at odds with the Executive Branch’s powers of personnel management. On the contrary, the government suggested that the Office of Personnel Management did have the authority to directly terminate the employees at affected agencies, and the theory of illegality was improper.
“We are grateful for these employees and the critical work they do, and AFGE will keep fighting until all federal employees who were unjustly and illegally fired are given their jobs back,” said American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) president Everett Kelley in a press release on March 17. The US Supreme Court’s response to the stay is pending.
