The Supreme Court has granted the Trump administration’s request to pause a lower court’s ruling that would have required the rehiring of thousands of federal workers.
The application for stay, presented to Justice Elena Kagan, is “stayed pending the disposition of the appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari, if such a writ is timely sought,” the order says. “Should certiorari be denied, this stay shall terminate automatically. In the event certiorari is granted, the stay shall terminate upon the sending down of the judgment of this Court.”
According to the order, the “District Court’s injunction was based solely on the allegations of the nine non-profit-organization plaintiffs in this case. But under established law, those allegations are presently insufficient to support the organizations’ standing.”
Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor would have denied the application.
The order follows U.S. District Judge William Alsup’s March ruling directing the Trump administration to reinstate thousands of probationary federal workers terminated in mass firings. His decision affected the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior, and Treasury and came in response to a lawsuit filed by a coalition of labor unions and organizations challenging the legality of the terminations.
The judge criticized the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) for directing the terminations without proper authority, calling the process a “sham” and a “gimmick.”
Prior to his ruling, twenty state attorneys generals also claimed the terminations violated federal law by failing to provide 60 days’ notice of the layoffs. The lawsuit alleged the OPM “unlawfully directed federal agencies to conduct mass terminations of probationary employees, suddenly and without any advance notice.”
