The Trump administration came to the Supreme Court on Monday morning, asking the justices to pause an order by a federal judge in San Francisco that would require the federal government to immediately reinstate more than 16,000 probationary employees who were fired from six agencies in February. The ruling by Senior U.S. District Judge William Alsup, Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris told the justices, lets third parties hijack the employment relationship between the federal government and its workforce.”
Harris also asked the court to quickly impose an administrative stay, a temporary freeze of the district court’s order while the justices consider the government’s request.
The lawsuit was brought by nonprofit groups that contend that layoffs could lead to fewer government services, affecting their members. On March 14, Alsup issued a preliminary injunction that requires six departments in the federal government – Departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior, and the Treasury – to immediately reinstate the probationary employees fired in February.
Alsup wrote that federal agencies can fire their employees, “even at scale,” but that the “Office of Personnel Management has no authority to hire and fire employees in another agency.”
The Trump administration went to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which denied its request for an administrative stay. The court of appeals has not yet ruled on the government’s emergency motion for a stay.
Harris contended in her filing that the nonprofit groups lack a legal right to sue, known as standing. “If organizations could establish Article III standing just by positing that fewer government employees will translate into less-optimal government services for some of their members,” she wrote, “then anyone anywhere with any contact with the federal government could second-guess any agencies’ personnel decisions down to which federal employees work which hours.”
Harris also argued that Alsup does not have the power to review the agencies’ decisions firing the probationary workers. Congress, she contended, has already “created an entirely different framework for resolving legal challenges to the termination of federal employees” – the Merit Systems Protection Board.
More broadly, Harris complained about the dozens of orders issued by district courts since the inauguration of President Donald Trump in January. Those orders, she suggested, constitute an “interbranch power grab” that has “sown chaos” in the executive branch.
Harris urged the justices to enter an administrative stay of Alsup’s order. Doing so, she said, would ease the burden on agencies that will otherwise result from reinstating the probationary employees and then onboarding them, as well as sparing the departments from “any obligation to provide work assignments to the onboarded employees or to file additional reports documenting those measures in district court.”
Harris’s request goes first to Justice Elena Kagan, who handles emergency appeals from the 9th Circuit. Kagan has not yet called for a response from the challengers.
This post is also published on SCOTUSblog.
