Judge tells White House to stop ordering mass firings

What happened

A federal judge in Northern California Thursday ordered the White House Office of Personnel Management to temporarily stop mandating the mass firing of federal employees, calling it a presumptively "illegal" overreach. U.S. District Judge William Alsup also said OMP must inform about a dozen agencies that they do not have to follow its layoff directives.

Who said what

OMP, the federal human resources division, "does not have any authority whatsoever, under any statute in the history of the universe, to hire and fire employees at another agency," Alsup said, siding with five nonprofits and several unions representing tens of thousands of fired probationary workers. He said he did not buy the government's argument that OPM merely requested the mass firings, often carried out via form letters citing nonexistent bad performance reviews. Several agency heads had said publicly they considered the OPM guidance an order.

The ruling was a "setback for the Trump administration's ongoing effort to dramatically shrink the federal workforce," but it won't "immediately help any of the federal workers who have already lost their jobs," Politico said. Alsup, a Bill Clinton appointee, ordered OPM to "rescind any directives it has issued requiring the mass terminations." But he said he did not have the authority to force agencies to rehire probationary employees and could not prevent them from firing the workers on their own.

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Hours before Alsup's ruling, the Trump administration "informed hundreds of probationary employees" at the National Weather Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that they were fired, The Washington Post said. The employees were "responsible for producing critical weather forecasts, maintaining radar systems, gathering data from satellites and monitoring key commercial fisheries," among other jobs.

What next?

Alsup said he would issue a written order later and hold an evidentiary hearing March 13, with acting OPM director Charles Ezell summoned to testify under oath. He said while he could not order the Defense Department not to terminate 5,400 probationary employees on Friday, as reportedly planned, he expected it to hold off in response to his ruling.