The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to intervene and block a lower court order that reinstated thousands of fired probationary employees in the federal government.
“That would leave matters as they currently lie, with the probationary employees the district court required to be reinstated remaining reinstated in at least a paid administrative leave status,” she said.
“But it would relieve agencies of the obligation of continuing efforts to onboard employees to full duty status; and it would relieve applicants of any obligation to provide work assignments to the onboarded employees or to file additional reports documenting those measures in district court.”
Harris’s filing followed an order from the Northern District of California and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that denied the administration’s request for a stay.
After he issued an order earlier this month, Northern District Senior District Judge William Alsup said that the Office of Personnel Management exceeded its authority by firing employees in another agency.
In their decision, two judges on the Ninth Circuit said that a stay would disrupt the status quo, given the lower court’s order. Judge Bridget Shelton Bade dissented, stating she would have issued a partial stay.
The case—American Federation of Government Employees, et al. v. United States Office of Personnel Management, et al.—is one of dozens challenging parts of the administration’s agenda and testing the limits of executive authority.
Harris said in her brief that the lower court “let third parties hijack the employment relationship between the federal government and its workforce.”
“And like many other recent orders, the court’s extraordinary reinstatement order violates the separation of powers, arrogating to a single district court the Executive Branch’s powers of personnel management on the flimsiest of grounds and the hastiest of timelines,” she added.
The dispute came amid another in which the administration asked the Supreme Court to halt a lower court order requiring the disbursement of foreign assistance. Although the Supreme Court as a whole rejected the request, several justices dissented earlier this month.
Justice Samuel Alito penned a dissent in which he said he was “stunned” by his colleagues’ decision.
“The answer to that question should be an emphatic ‘No,’ but a majority of this Court apparently thinks otherwise.”
