Donald Trump has been fighting with the courts to enforce the firing of thousands of probationary workers and Biden appointees.
This has been and up and down battle, but the Supreme Court has just ruled that Trump can go forward with firing the Biden appointees… for now.
When Trump initially issued the order, it meant that tens of thousands of federal employees who had been labeled probationary workers would lose their jobs.
Suits were immediately filed on behalf of the workers, and Democrat-appointed judges were more than happy to slap an injunction against the administration to block the firings.
The judge ruled, “The government can terminate probationary employees en masse…. but when it does so it must follow certain laws and regulations.
“Recently, government agencies executed a series of mass terminations, but when they did so, on the record before the Court, they failed to follow mandatory RIF procedures.”
After the loss, the Trump administration was scrambling to rehire all the employees who were terminated.
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) issued a new memo, stating, “Please note that, by this memorandum, OPM [office of personnel management] is not directing agencies to take any specific performance-based actions regarding probationary employees.
“Agencies have ultimate decision-making authority over, and responsibility for, such personnel actions.”
Had the firings gone through, more than 20,000 people would have lost their jobs, and some 5,000 had already been informed they were no longer employed. That, of course, was reversed after that ruling was issued.
While Trump was firing probationary employees, he had also fired two Biden appointees, National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) member Gwynne Wilcox and Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) member Cathy Harris.
Both sued the Trump administration to be reinstated, which was granted in the lower courts, but Chief Justice Roberts has ruled that Trump can go forward with the firings, at least for now.
Now, this is a win for Trump, but the question is if whether the win will hold or not.
While I don’t think Trump will win the probationary workers case, I think he has a really good case here based on the precedent set when Biden fired Trump appointees from their board positions. Trump can lean into that, and I think he has a very good shot of having both of these individuals removed from government, which would be a huge win for his administration.
