By Jack Queen and Daniel Wiessner
(Reuters) – The Trump administration can for now continue its mass firings of federal employees, a federal judge ruled on Thursday, rejecting a bid by a group of labor unions to halt President Donald Trump’s dramatic downsizing of the roughly 2.3 million-strong federal workforce.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper in Washington, D.C. federal court is temporary while the litigation plays out. But it is a win for the Trump administration as it seeks to purge the federal workforce and slash what it deems wasteful and fraudulent government spending.
The National Treasury Employees Union and four other unions sued last week to block the administration from firing hundreds of thousands of federal workers and granting buyouts to employees who quit voluntarily.
The unions are seeking to block eight agencies including the Department of Defense, Department of Health and Human Services, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and Department of Veterans Affairs from implementing mass layoffs.
Cooper on Thursday said he likely lacks the power to hear the case, and that the unions instead must file complaints with a federal labor board that hears disputes between unions and federal agencies.
Trump has tapped Tesla CEO Elon Musk to lead a new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which has swept through federal agencies slashing thousands of jobs and dismantling federal programs since Trump became president last month and put Musk in charge of rooting out what he deems wasteful spending as part of Trump’s dramatic overhaul of government. Trump also ordered federal agencies to work closely with DOGE to identify federal employees who could be laid off.
Termination emails were sent last week to workers across the federal government, mostly recently hired employees still on probation, at agencies such as the Department of Education, the Small Business Administration, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the General Services Administration, and others.
The plaintiffs, which include the United Auto Workers, the National Treasury Employees Union, and the National Federation of Federal Employees, said in their lawsuit that White House efforts, including through DOGE, to shrink the federal workforce violate separation of powers principles by undermining Congress’ authority to fund federal agencies.
The unions said that unless the court intervenes, they will be irreparably harmed by lost revenue from dues-paying members who were either fired or retired early to take buyouts.
Most civil service employees can be fired legally only for bad performance or misconduct, and they have a host of due process and appeal rights if they are let go arbitrarily. The probationary employees primarily targeted in last week’s wave have fewer legal protections.
A judge overseeing a similar case in Boston federal court allowed the buyouts to move forward in a ruling on February 12, finding labor unions that filed the case did not have legal standing to bring the lawsuit because they had not shown how they would be harmed by the plan.
The window to accept buyouts has now closed, and about 75,000 workers took up the administration’s offer, according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. That represents about 3% of the total federal workforce.
The unions are asking the judge to declare the firings and buyouts illegal and block the government from firing more employees or offering another round of buyouts.
In a Monday court filing, the government said the unions did not have a right to sue because they would not be harmed by the firings and buyouts. Granting the unions’ request would also inappropriately interfere with the president’s efforts to streamline the federal workforce, the government argued.
More than 70 lawsuits have been filed seeking to block Trump’s efforts to remake the federal workforce, clamp down on immigration and roll back transgender rights.
The results have so far been mixed, but judges have blocked some aspects of Trump’s marquee policies, including his bid to end automatic birthright citizenship to children born in the U.S.
(Reporting by Jack Queen in New York and Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi)
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