The administration has already asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in the case, that involved the reinstatement of more than 17,000 newer workers.
A federal appeals court on March 26 declined a U.S. government request to pause a ruling that has forced officials to reinstate thousands of government workers.
President Donald Trump’s administration has not demonstrated that they are likely to succeed in the case, two of three judges on a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit panel
ruled. The government has also not proven that it would suffer irreparable harm unless the reinstatement order is paused, the judges said.
“Appellants also have not demonstrated a likelihood that the district court clearly erred in finding that the six agencies were directed by the United States Office of Personnel Management to fire probationary employees,” U.S. Circuit Judges Ana de Alba and Barry Silverman wrote. “It follows that appellants have not shown that the district court likely abused its discretion in ordering that the terminated employees be reinstated.”
U.S. District Judge William Alsup earlier in March
ordered six agencies, including the Department of Defense, to reinstate about 17,600 newer workers they terminated based on guidance from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
The Trump administration appealed. Officials said the OPM’s
revision of a key memorandum, with an emphasis to agencies that they have ultimate authority for hiring and firing, should have ended the case.
“Any confusion was cleared up, and no agency could shift accountability to OPM,” government lawyers
said in a motion to the appeals court. “... At least one agency rescinded terminations, but most did not. That result is unsurprising—the President directed agencies to optimize the federal workforce, and agencies may make employment decisions against the backdrop of that policy choice.”
The revision “should have been the end of the matter, not a starting point for the district court to require agencies to reinstate probationary employees en masse on the novel theory that the agencies must not now be exercising independent personnel judgments,” they
noted in another filing.
The plaintiffs
said in a filing that the government had not presented evidence meeting the requirements for a stay pending appeal.
“Their retroactive protest that restoring the status quo would be administratively burdensome does not establish irreparable injury,” they wrote.
The Ninth Circuit had already
denied an emergency motion for a stay of Alsup’s ruling. Alba and Silverman wrote at the time that pausing the order would “disrupt the status quo and turn it on its head.” The Trump administration has
asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene, but justices have not yet weighed in.
U.S. Circuit Judge Bridget S. Bade, the other judge on the Ninth Circuit panel, said previously that the government had persuasively argued that the order imposed a substantial burden on it.
Bade also offered a dissent to the new ruling, finding that the government is likely to succeed in the case “because the district court did not have jurisdiction to enter the preliminary injunction.”
While Alsup concluded that the organizations that sued OPM, including Vote Vets Action Fund, have standing because they’ve had to divert resources owing to OPM’s actions, Bade said the groups have not shown that the reinstatement order is likely to resolve the harms they’ve allegedly suffered.
“Reinstating the terminated employees does not mean that they will return to the same positions and assignments, or that the agencies will provide the services that the organizational plaintiffs desire. It is just as likely that the various agencies will reassign these employees to new positions, or assign them different tasks, or prioritize their mission and services in a manner that does not result in increased services to the organizational plaintiffs, or even lawfully terminate the employees,” she wrote.
The ruling came several days after Alsup
reversed an earlier decision and said unions who are co-plaintiffs in the case can also sue the Trump administration over the mass terminations. The Ninth Circuit did not cover that development.
