OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
4:39 PM – Tuesday, April 8, 2025
One of two lower court decisions blocking the Trump administration from terminating roughly 16,000 federal probationary employees was overturned by the Supreme Court on Tuesday — a win for the GOP administration.
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However, the other injunction is still in force, as it hasn’t yet made it to the Supreme Court.
The high court issued an emergency order that stayed a California federal jurist’s order to rehire the employees across six government departments: Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs.
In legal contexts, “stayed” refers to a court order that temporarily halts a legal proceeding or the enforcement of a judgment — allowing for further review or action.
SCOTUS also ruled that nonprofit organizations that opposed the mass firings had lacked standing. So, for the time being, employees at those six agencies will continue to be on paid administrative leave.
Meanwhile, another similar order issued by a federal judge in Maryland has not yet received a response from the Supreme Court — but it is still in force in 19 states and the District of Columbia (DC).
“The [California] District Court’s injunction was based solely on the allegations of the nine non-profit-organization plaintiffs in this case. But under established law, those allegations are presently insufficient to support the organizations’ standing,” the unsigned order stated.
“This order does not address the claims of the other plaintiffs, which did not form the basis of the District Court’s preliminary injunction.”
Liberal Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor stated that they would have upheld the lower court’s ruling, unsurprisingly. Jackson argued that the administration lacked “demonstrated urgency” for the Supreme Court’s remedy — though Sotomayor did not offer an explanation.
Last month, U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who was appointed by former Democrat President Bill Clinton, asserted that the mass dismissals were a “sham,” arguing that they had been unlawfully ordered by the interim director and the Office of Personnel Management.
“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,” Alsup wrote previously.
The lawsuit, which was filed by a combination of public sector unions and other organizations, did not identify specific employees who had been fired.
“There is no doubt that thousands of public service employees were unlawfully fired in an effort to cripple federal agencies and their crucial programs that serve millions of Americans every day,” plaintiffs in the case said in a statement on Tuesday.
“Today’s order by the U.S. Supreme Court is deeply disappointing but is only a momentary pause in our efforts to enforce the trial court’s orders and hold the federal government accountable,” they continued.
In the Maryland lawsuit, U.S. District Judge James Bredar of Baltimore, who was appointed by former Democrat President Barack Obama, tried to argue that the Trump government had not complied with regulations requiring states that would be affected by the massive federal workforce reduction to be given advance notice.
The complaints alleged that since Trump took office on January 20th, at least 24,000 probationary employees have been fired overall. However, the government has not verified this figure.
Meanwhile, conservative social media users chimed in on X to express their thoughts on this week’s news coming out of the U.S. Supreme Court.
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