The US supreme court has handed Donald Trump a reprieve from a judge’s ruling that his administration must rehire 16,000 probationary workers fired in its purge of the federal bureaucracy.
A day after ruling in the White House’s favor to allow the continued deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members, the court gave the White House a less clear-cut victory in halting the order by a California court that dismissed workers from six government agencies must be rehired.
The court struck down by a 7-2 majority last month’s ruling by US district court judge William Alsup because non-profit groups who had sued on behalf of the fired workers had no legal standing.
It did not rule on the firings themselves, which affected probationary workers in the Pentagon, the treasury, and the departments of energy, agriculture, interior and veterans affairs.
“The district court’s injunction was based solely on the allegations of the nine non-profit-organization plaintiffs in this case,” the unsigned ruling read. “But under established law, those allegations are presently insufficient to support the organizations’ standing. This order does not address the claims of the other plaintiffs, which did not form the basis of the district court’s preliminary injunction.”
Two of the court’s three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented.
The victory, though limited, is likely to embolden the Trump administration in the belief that the spate of legal reverses it has faced since taking office can be eventually overturned in the supreme court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, due largely to three rightwing judges Trump nominated to the bench during his first presidency.
The extent of Tuesday’s victory was qualified by the fact that it does not affect a separate order by a judge in Maryland applying to the same agencies plus several others. Judge James Bredar of the Maryland federal district court ordered the administration to reinstate workers in response to a case brought by 19 states and the government of Washington DC.
In the California ruling, the court heard how staff were informed by a templated email from the office of personnel management that they were losing their jobs for performance-related reasons. “The Agency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the Agency would be in the public interest,” the email said.
While accepting that workforce reductions were acceptable if carried out “correctly under the law”, Alsup said workers had been fired for bogus reasons.
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“It is sad, a sad day when our government would fire some good employee, and say it was based on performance, when they know good and well, that’s a lie,” he said.
In filings to the supreme court, the acting solicitor general, Sarah Harris, argued that Alsup had exceeded his powers.
“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 wrote. “That is no way to run a government. This court should stop the ongoing assault on the constitutional structure before further damage is wrought.”