Federal Judge William Alsup has ordered The Fascist Felon, DODGEbags, and the Office of Personnel Management to stop the firing of probationary employees. Alsup issued the temporary restraining order at the end of a hearing on Thursday. His order covers agencies whose firings impact the civic organizations that sued the Trump administration. Those agencies include the Department of Veterans Affairs, the National Park Service, the Small Business Administration, the Bureau of Land Management, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Defense.
“The Office of Personnel Management does not have any authority whatsoever under any statute in the history of the universe, to hire and fire employees within another agency,” U.S. District Judge William Alsup said Thursday night. “It can hire its own employees, yes. Can fire them. But it cannot order or direct some other agency to do so.”
“OPM has no authority to tell any agency in the United States government, other than itself, who they can hire and who they can fire, period. So on the merits, I think, we start with that important proposition,” he said.
The lawsuit, originally brought by labor unions and later joined by the civic groups, alleges that OPM unlawfully ordered agencies to carry out the firings.
In court, the government’s attorney argued (spinned) that OPM had merely asked, not ordered, the agencies to fire probationary employees, drawing a distinction between the two.
“Asking is not ordering,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelsey Helland argued.
As part of its court filings, the government submitted an OPM memo to human resource officers dated Feb. 14. It states, “We have asked that you separate probationary employees that you have not identified as mission-critical no later than end of the day Monday, 2/17.”
