Judge rejects Trump administration's motion to stay order reinstating fired federal workers

A federal judge in San Francisco on Saturday night rejected the Trump administration's motion asking him to stay his preliminary injunction ordering six federal government departments to immediately reinstate probationary employees who were fired last month.

Senior U.S. District Judge William Alsup - an appointee of President Bill Clinton -- also issued his preliminary injunction, granted from the bench on Thursday morning, in written form on Friday night.

His denial of a stay blasted the federal government for what he described as its "attempts to frustrate fact-finding" by submitting more declarations Friday from individuals at various federal agencies that hadn't been introduced before his hearing on the proposed injunction or a temporary restraining order.

"This is a last-ditch attempt to relitigate those orders on a new, untested record," Alsup wrote in Saturday's order denying a stay. American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO et al. v. U.S. Office of Personnel Management et al., 25-cv-1970 (N.D. Cal., filed Feb. 19, 2025).

The next step for the federal government is an appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which U.S. Department of Justice attorney Yuri S. Fuchs promised to file if Alsup denied the federal government's request for a stay.

The ruling is the second one against the Trump administration concerning the firing of probationary employees. Senior U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar of the District of Maryland, an appointee of President Barack Obama, granted a temporary restraining order Thursday blocking their firing in a lawsuit filed by 20 states, including California Attorney General Rob Bonta.

The government has appealed Bredar's order to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. State of Maryland et al. v. U.S. Department of Agriculture et al., 25-cv-00748 (D. Md., filed March 6, 2025).

Fuchs argued in Friday's motion for a stay in the California case that the unions suing the U.S. Office of Personnel Management have failed to establish a likelihood they will succeed on the merits of their claims and that they lack standing to pursue relief for non-union federal workers who were fired.

"That is a remarkable intrusion into the operation of the Executive Branch and into the functioning of each of these agencies as they seek to implement the President's workforce optimization initiative," he wrote.

In his Saturday night order, Alsup disagreed about the impact of a stay.

"A stay would further injure plaintiffs because reinstatement becomes more difficult with every passing day," the judge wrote. "Terminated probationers are moving on with their lives, as they must. Fewer will be available to redress the harms suffered by the organizational plaintiffs tomorrow than there are today."

"And, the government has wholly failed to argue there is any other way to avoid the irreparable injuries flowing from the unlawful terminations except to reinstate the employees," Alsup added.

Alsup's denial of a stay followed his written order Friday night granting the preliminary injunction, issued a day after he ordered it from the bench during a hearing.

"Each federal agency has the statutory authority to hire and fire its employees, even at scale, subject to certain safeguards," he wrote Friday. "The Office of Personnel Management has no authority to hire and fire employees in another agency. Yet that is what happened here -- en masse."

"OPM directed all (or at least most) federal agencies to terminate all probationary employees for 'performance,'" the judge added, citing an example of one employee who got a performance-related firing just a few days after getting a glowing job review.

While the Trump administration denied the decisions were made by the Office of Personnel Management, Alsup cited a series of statements by other federal departments, including in termination letters and Zoom calls, saying the firings were done at the agency's direction.

Alsup ruled that Charles Ezell, the OPM's acting director, unlawfully directed other federal departments to fire tens of thousands of probationary employees.

Attorneys for the plaintiff unions, as well as the Washington state attorney general's office, countered that the federal government agencies "have chosen to engage in further stonewalling and direct defiance of the Court's orders. Defendants' filing admits they are not implementing the Court's preliminary injunction."

Attorneys with San Francisco-based Altshuler Berzon LLP have led the litigation for the unions.