WASHINGTON—A federal judge on Feb. 20 declined to block, for now, downsizing efforts by President Donald Trump’s administration, including mass firings and buyout programs.
Unions representing hundreds of thousands of federal workers had filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump and the heads of several government agencies, saying they were overstepping the executive branch’s authority.
They alleged that the government was engaging in “mass firings” of newer employees still under “probationary” status.
“The allegation is not without evidence,” Cooper said.
Nevertheless, the court denied the unions’ request to block the terminations, saying “it likely lacks” jurisdiction over their claims.
The claims must instead be brought before the Federal Labor Relations Authority, which handles wrongful termination and employee disputes, the judge said.
At a hearing on Feb. 18, an attorney representing the unions said that slashing the size of federal agencies would cause “irreparable harm” because of the resulting loss in union dues and bargaining power.
At the hearing, the judge, the plaintiffs, and the defense agreed that the case is an employer–employee dispute, which would usually be brought before an agency like the Merit Systems Protection Board or the Federal Labor Relations Authority.
An attorney for the plaintiffs said that because the case potentially involved thousands of employees, it would be impractical to file so many individual complaints.
She noted that such disputes could last months or years before being resolved, and unions would lose membership revenue during members’ unemployment, even if they were later reinstated.
Cooper said the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) estimated that terminating all “nonessential employees” at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Health and Human Services alone would cost the union $15 million in revenue.
The plaintiffs asked the court to declare the federal buyout program unlawful, and to stop the administration from implementing another similar program.
The buyout, or deferred resignation offer, which ended on Feb. 12, was extended to more than 2 million government employees by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), in a bid to hasten Trump’s plan to shrink the federal workforce.
Through the offer, dubbed “Fork in the Road,” OPM offered workers full pay and benefits until Sept. 30 in exchange for voluntary resignation, and warned that “the majority of federal agencies are likely to be downsized through restructurings, realignments, and reductions in force.”
That program was also the subject of a lawsuit, which resulted in U.S. District Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. extending the window for employees to decide whether or not to accept the offer.
In that case too, the judge declined to block the buyout offer completely, as he felt the court had no jurisdiction over the matter.
