‘No way to run a government’: Supreme Court halts order forcing Trump to reinstate fired federal workers
The Supreme Court halted a lower court order on Tuesday that would have forced the Trump administration to reinstate thousands of fired federal workers.
The Trump administration asked the justices in March to block an order issued by Clinton-appointed U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup directing the reinstatement of over 16,000 probationary employees.
Some of the nonprofit organizations behind the lawsuit made allegations that are “presently insufficient to support the organizations’ standing,” the Supreme Court’s order states. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson would have denied the request.
BREAKING: The Supreme Court halted an order that would force the Trump administration to reinstate more than 16,000 fired federal workers. pic.twitter.com/a4pQP2ribn
— Katelynn Richardson (@katesrichardson) April 8, 2025
Alsup ruled March 13 that six agencies — the Departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Energy, Interior and Treasury — must offer jobs back to probationary employees who had been terminated.
Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris wrote in the government’s March 24 application that one judge should not be able to control “the Executive Branch’s powers of personnel management on the flimsiest of grounds and the hastiest of timelines.
“That is no way to run a government,” she wrote. “This Court should stop the ongoing assault on the constitutional structure before further damage is wrought.”
The organizations argued in filings that they had grounds to sue because the mass firings impede their ability to “perform core business activities.”
“It strains credulity that returning employees to work would cause irreparable harm to the Government when these employees had the same workspaces, credentials, benefits, and training just a few weeks ago,” the groups wrote.
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