The Supreme Court earlier this month blocked a previous order issued by the same judge that reinstated laid-off employees.
A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to provide laid-off federal probationary employees with a written notice stating that they were not terminated for performance reasons but that it was part of a government-wide termination effort.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup also ordered Acting Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Charles Ezell not to tell agencies to terminate “any federal employee or group of federal employees.”
The judge wrote on April 18 that the firings of probationary workers followed an OPM template that states they were fired for job performance reasons.
“Termination under the false pretense of performance is an injury that will persist for the working life of each civil servant,” wrote Alsup, who is based in San Francisco. “The stain created by OPM’s pretense will follow each employee through their careers and will limit their professional opportunities.”
The latest directive from the judge is part of a lawsuit that was filed by labor unions and nonprofits contesting the mass firings of thousands of probationary workers in February under President Donald Trump.
Probationary workers are typically new hires or employees who were recently promoted and who must serve a trial period of one to two years before they receive full-term, or permanent, employment.
“If a particular termination was in fact carried out after an individualized evaluation of that employee’s performance or fitness, the Chief Human Capital Officer (or equivalent) of that agency may instead submit … a declaration, under oath and seal, stating so and providing the individual reasoning underpinning that termination,” Alsup also wrote, setting a May 8 deadline to do so.
On April 8, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked an earlier order from Alsup that required the administration to return to work some of the terminated probationary federal employees who were terminated. The justices were responding to the Trump administration’s emergency appeal of Alsup’s ruling
